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Tl;dr: Obesity is a disease because it is harmful to the people who suffer it and can lead to premature death.
The WHO and many other medical institutions’ definition of disease is not very clear or specific. However, most can agree that a disease refers to a condition, often with symptoms, which restricts quality of life and/or shortens life expectancy.
The WHO calls obesity an epidemic and warns of the impact to the world population if nothing is done to curve the growing number of people affected. It kills over 4 million people a year and can lead to further ailments over time. Obesity can arise from genetic, environmental or personal factors, but it can be diagnosed and treated.
Of course, being comfortable in your own body, regardless of weight, should be a priority. But being severely overweight can lead to lower quality of life. The excess weight puts additional pressure on hip and knee joints which may lead to walking difficulties or disability. And with obese patients being 20 times more likely to need knee replacement surgery than a person who is not overweight, this is a real possibility.
It is also linked to lower fertility rates, in both men and women. Men have an estimated 10% lower fertility for every additional 10 kilos. In women, one study found 66.4% of obese women conceived after one year in contrast to 81.4% of women with lower weight. This is, in part due to the hormonal imbalance attributed to the higher weight.
Obesity can also lead to further complications and a higher risk of developing other ailments, such as type 2 diabetes, hypertension, strokes, among others.
Yet obesity is a disease in itself because it impedes normal life, lowers life expectancy and is responsible for millions of deaths worldwide every year.
Further reading:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1299105/
TL:DR Obesity is not a ‘disease’ in the sense that other diseases are. Instead, rather than explicitly being termed as a 'disease' it should be seen as a risk factor for diseases. However, this does not make obesity any less serious as a health issue.
Overweightness is positively correlated with a wide variety of different health issues. Often it is these problems which are the risk factors for different diseases. The complications of obesity are diseases in their own right, with issues including heart attacks and strokes, and rather than obesity being a disease it is rather a risk factor for disease.
Similarly, not everybody who is obese suffers from health problems, much like how not everybody who is a normal weight is completely healthy. Obesity cannot be entirely classified as a disease because it doesn’t always contribute to an illness or sickness.
Obesity increases the likelihood of a person having health issues and diseases rather than actually being a direct disease itself. However, the affects that obesity can often have upon people should not be ignored, obesity can have serious consequences and can make people very ill, it just tends to do so through indirect means rather than being a ‘disease’ in its own right.
WORKS REFERENCED
‘Is Obesity Really a Disease?’, (https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/06/is-obesity-really-a-disease/277148/)
If you classify something as a disease, you are saying that that disease is making you sick. Obesity does not make you sick in the same way that a virus or a bacteria does, nor does it make you sick in the same way that alcohol or cigarettes do. At most, obesity is a symptom of a disease, not the disease itself. People who are suffering from a disease may display obesity as a symptom. Moreover, obesity and body weight carry social meaning, so there needs to be a precise definition of what we consider to be obese.
While obesity is not fully in the control of the individual the term “disease” refers to a condition caused by an active pathogen. Obesity is a result of a complex web of factors, including social and economic environment as well as genetics. It is not something that can be treated with a simple solution but requires a broad approach.
Does obesity satisfy the definition of a disease?
There are a number of varying accounts for what we classify as a disease. Under some accounts, it seems that obesity satisfies the conditions and under others, it does not.
- Jerome Wakefield defined a disease as a harmful dysfunction. Bringing together both the naturalistic (factual component) and normativist (value component) notions of disease accounts. Under his definition, a disease is a biological dysfunction of a naturally selected trait that causes harm. Harm in this sense broadly covering all negative conditions.
- We can see that obesity satisfies that first condition in that it is harmful. Obesity has many negative outcomes. For example: type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and even premature death.
- However, is it a dysfunction of a naturally selected trait? I don’t believe obesity satisfies this second criterion There may be an underlying disease that satisfies the dysfunction element, in which obesity is a consequence (e.g: PCOS). However, I don’t know if we can call obesity itself a dysfunction.
TLDR; Addiction is a disease.
There is an issue here between whether people class mental illness as a disease. This comment will treat mental illness as a disease.
There are very few people who would argue Anorexia was not a disease. Anorexia is a type of addiction, albeit an addiction that is not understood very well. There are other addictions, such as to drugs, that less people would argue as a disease, but I would argue addiction, in any form, is a disease. Obesity is an addiction to food and as such, is a disease.
anorexia is an eating disorder. disorders, diseases, syndromes and illnesses have strict definitions
It is, only in the literal sense of “not at ease,” dis- meaning “not,” and ease meaning ease. I can assume that it would be at the very least uncomfortable to be obese. An obese person, if the obesity makes them uncomfortable, is therefore diseased.
The question that obesity is a disease, to me, is a bit too short for context. Do I believe that obesity in itself is a disease? No. Does obesity cause diseases? Absolutely yes. Cigarettes themselves are not a disease. They can however lead to lung disease. Likewise we don’t immediately look at skinny person and think they have a disease because of their lack of weight. We simply classify them as skinny. Same applies to obesity in my opinion. We don’t look at people and automatically claim they have a disease. So I guess what I’m saying is the figure of speech ‘obesity’ historically isn’t used to classify those with a medical condition. Rather the term is used to categorize the appearance of people.
I hear you but I think the idea behind the statement is political: if we frame obesity as a disease (a malfunctioning of the body, a condition that induces those who suffer from it to over-eat, to metabolise slowly, etc...) then we stop blaming obese people for it. We externalise the problem - it's no longer 'laziness' or 'unhealthy lifestyles' or 'letting yourself go'...
But I think the key thing here is the issue of spiking the blame....
This makes sense. I don’t believe blaming others (I.e. you’re becoming obese and therefore it’s your fault) is the correct stance. Rather a disclaimer, such as found on tobacco products, is suffice. Society shouldn’t blame smokers nor should it blame those who are obese. A collective recognition of the repercussions will suffice. On an economic standpoint, it is not societies fault nor responsibility to afterwards “give way” for those who had reasonable notice of the choices they were making. Society should aim to incentivize individual health mentally and physically by simple promotion of treating one’s body kindly and fairly.
Obesity is more of a symptom of something else going on that can always be traced back to a disease or underlying health condition. Whether it be a mental health issue (anxiety, depression, PTSD), overactive thyroid, Prader-Willi syndrome, Cushing syndrome, osteoarthritis, or debilitating bone and ligament issues. And, sometimes it's just genetic, or a combination of all of these things.
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