Obesity Causes - Continue

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Illness is also known to result in weight gain and obesity. Perhaps the best known illness which most often leads to obesity is hypothyroidism. Prominent among many obesity causes, hypothyroidism itself normally produces only mild weight gain. But, when it combines with the right environmental conditions, it quickly leads to a substantial increase in weight.

The other culprit is medication which can also be a major cause for weight gain. With drugs, weight gain is significant and rapid but the way in which they lead to weight gain varies. In fact, in some medications it is also very difficult to detect a reason for weight gain. Some medications like corticosteroids increase appetite while medicines classified as beta-adrenoceptor blockers reduce metabolic rate.

Certain diets and dieting can also cause obesity because some foods produce unusually high levels of blood sugar immediately after eating. This causes the weight to shoot up. Dieting, on the other hand, may cause sustained weight loss but the minute it is stopped, pounds begin to pile on.

Specific eating disorders like binge eating disorder also causes obesity. Bulimia nervosa, a psychiatric disorder, is a condition in which eating cannot be controlled and interspersing binge eating with normal eating habit can cause the weight to increase.

These are just a few of the obesity causes, wherein, most individuals have little or no control over their situation.