Health-related Implications
While the negative health outcomes associated with obesity are accepted within the medical community, the health implications of the overweight category are more controversial. The generally accepted view is that being overweight causes similar health problems to obesity, but to a lesser degree. Adams et al. estimated that the risk of death increases by 20 to 40 percent among overweight people, and the Framingham heart study found that being overweight at age 40 reduced life expectancy by three years. A review in 2013 came to the result that being overweight significantly increases the risk of oligospermia and azoospermia in men.
Flegal et al., however, found that the mortality rate for individuals who are classified as overweight (BMI 25 to 30) may actually be lower than for those with an "ideal" weight (BMI 18.5 to 25).
Being overweight has been identified as a cause of cancer, and is projected to overtake smoking as the primary cause of cancer in developed countries as cases of cancer linked to smoking dwindle.
Psychological well-being is also at risk in the overweight individual due to social discrimination. However, children under the age of eight are normally not affected.
Being overweight does not increase mortality in older people.
Read more about this topic: Overweight
Famous quotes containing the word implications:
“Philosophical questions are not by their nature insoluble. They are, indeed, radically different from scientific questions, because they concern the implications and other interrelations of ideas, not the order of physical events; their answers are interpretations instead of factual reports, and their function is to increase not our knowledge of nature, but our understanding of what we know.”
—Susanne K. Langer (1895–1985)