A few weeks ago the American Medical Association officially classified obesity as a disease and already the debate has begun. Is obesity a disease or is it merely a condition precipitated by the individual’s own behavior and lifestyle? The answer to this question is not immediately clear, but one thing is certain and that is the presence of obesity is highly correlated with the occurrence of diseases like hypertension and diabetes.

Whenever an individual is diagnosed as diabetic there is an 80-90 percent chance that that individual is also obese. Notwithstanding the fact that some weight gain may be induced by diabetic medications, in a large number of cases individuals who present with diabetes also present with obesity. This is also the case with persons who present with hypertension, a large percentage of them appear to have weight management challenges. In fact, hypertensive patients are often advised to lose weight in combination with prober diet and exercise in order to control hypertensive conditions.

Based on the foregoing fact alone we can conclude that obesity is one of the gorillas in the room when it comes to the presence of common ailments like hypertension and diabetes, but is obesity in and of itself a disease? This is a difficult question. In the first place, there is hardly agreement among healthcare professionals on what exactly constitutes a disease, but many stakeholders more or less loosely concur that a disease is an abnormal condition that affects the body of an organism leading to some form of distress or impairment. Often times there are specific symptoms associated with the diagnosed conditions.

On the basis of my limited experience in this field it appears that conditions that are classified as diseases are for the most part physiological rather than behavioral in nature. By that I mean that psychological/mental conditions, for example, are rarely referred to as diseases; they are referred to as conditions or disorders within the general rubric of that nomenclature. Now bear in mind that some psychological conditions may result from physiologically impairment, but they are nevertheless referred to as conditions. Perhaps it may be instructive that obesity be viewed under the same lenses and be treated as it was in the beginning, an abnormal behavioral condition.

Regardless of the classification, obesity is a threat to the overall well being of anyone who finds himself challenged with this predicament and as a consequence every effort must be made to effectively manage and control it. While a causal relationship between obesity and common diseases like hypertension and diabetes has not been established, there is without a doubt a high correlation between incidences of these diseases and obesity. To be safe then, you should make every effort to ensure that your weight is within the recommended range for your height and age.