Artur Viana, MD, Clinical Director Yale Medicine Metabolic Health & Weight Loss Program, points to the official definition of obesity: A chronic, relapsing, multifactorial, neurobehavioral disease, wherein an increase in body fat promotes adipose tissue dysfunction and abnormal fat mass physical forces, resulting in adverse metabolic, biomechanical, and psychosocial health consequences.
"To simplify, it is a disease that lasts for many years (chronic), which may improve then worsen (relapsing), has many different causes that can be present at the same time," Dr. Viana explains. "In obesity there is an increase in fat mass and the fat tissue (which is a tissue that is involved in many important regulatory steps in metabolism) is not working as it should."
According to Dr. Viana, there isn't one #1 cause. "Obesity medicine specialists wish there was a number one cause, as this would make treatment a lot easier," he reveals. But the NIH is a little more specific, saying the #1 cause is "by eating too much and moving too little…. If you consume high amounts of energy, particularly fat and sugars, but do not burn off the energy through exercise and physical activity, much of the surplus energy will be stored by the body as fat."
The #1 Cause of Obesity, According to Science — Eat This Not That
"To simplify, it is a disease that lasts for many years (chronic), which may improve then worsen (relapsing), has many different causes that can be present at the same time," Dr. Viana explains. "In obesity there is an increase in fat mass and the fat tissue (which is a tissue that is involved in many important regulatory steps in metabolism) is not working as it should."
According to Dr. Viana, there isn't one #1 cause. "Obesity medicine specialists wish there was a number one cause, as this would make treatment a lot easier," he reveals. But the NIH is a little more specific, saying the #1 cause is "by eating too much and moving too little…. If you consume high amounts of energy, particularly fat and sugars, but do not burn off the energy through exercise and physical activity, much of the surplus energy will be stored by the body as fat."
The #1 Cause of Obesity, According to Science — Eat This Not That
