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‘Check your BMI before you hit the gym’
Here is a doctor’s advice for people, especially youths, who are crazy about joining the gym: One must check one’s body mass index (BMI) before joining the gym or any other weight-loss programme.
Here is a doctor’s advice for people, especially youths, who are crazy about joining the gym: One must check one’s body mass index (BMI) before joining the gym or any other weight-loss programme.
“If one has entered the stage of morbid obesity, then hitting the gym, dieting and weight-loss programmes would not respond,” said Dr Pradeep Chowbey, obesity specialist and surgeon of bariatric surgery from New Delhi.
Obesity is measured according to BMI. If a person’s BMI is more than 32%, then the person falls in the category of ‘morbid obesity’. “In such cases, surgery is suggestible,” said Dr Chowbey, who was recently in Bhopal for a national conference on diabetes and cardiology. Dr Chowbey has treated Dalai Lama for gall bladder stone.
He cautioned people against blindly believing what they see in advertisements on weight-loss products on television screens and streets.
“At the same time medicines for weight loss should be avoided as they caused anxiety, depression and even suicidal tendencies,” he added. He said lifestyle modifications like exercising and eating healthy could reduce obesity in the early stages when the BMI is between 25% and 32%.
After conducting a study in a few schools of Delhi, Dr Chowbey had found that 33% of the adolescents (13-20 years) were obese.
There is a considerable increase of obesity in Madhya Pradesh also, where the percentage of obese men in the last decade has increased from 4.3% to 10.9 % and that of women from 7.6% to 13.6 %, according to data comparison between the National Family Health Survey 3 and 4.
“In the last 5 years rate of obesity has grown from 16 % to 29 % in India. This is a lifestyle disease and hence if we modify our lifestyle and eat healthy food, it can be prevented,” said Dr Chowbey.
While answering how obesity is related to diabetes, Chowbey said, “At least in 60% cases obese people develop diabetics, it’s called diabesity. Indians have thrifty genes and thus they are more prone to diabesity.”
Apart from diabetes, obesity can also lead to heart ailments, joint pains, frequent fractures, hypertension and increased cholesterol, he added.
