“Obesity often comes with a side of chronic inflammation, causing inflammatory chemicals and immune cells to flood adipose tissue, the hypothalamus, the liver, and other areas of the body. Inflammation is a big part of what makes obesity such an unhealthy condition, contributing to Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, cancers, autoimmune disorders, and possibly even neurodegenerative diseases.” Read this interesting analysis of Y. Endo et al., “Obesity drives Th17 cell differentiation by inducing the lipid metabolic kinase, ACC1,” Cell Reports, 12:1042-55, 2015. Especially if you are plagued by any autoimmune diseases.
“High-income countries have greater rates of obesity than middle- and low-income countries. Countries that develop wealth also develop obesity; for instance, with economic growth in China and India, obesity rates have increased by several-fold. The international trend is that greater obesity tracks with greater wealth.
The U.S. is one of the wealthiest countries in the world and accordingly has high obesity rates; one-third of the population has obesity plus another third is overweight. The situation is predicted to worsen; rising childhood obesity rates forewarn of worsening statistics (4). While it is agreed that both individual factors such as genetic susceptibility and behavior are important in life-long weight gain, evidence is ill-defined with respect to the nature of the environmental influences that impact obesity (5). “ . . .
“Sedentary individuals move 2 hours per day less than active individuals and expend less energy, and they are thereby prone to obesity, chronic metabolic disease, and cardiovascular death. . . “