The Undeniable Link Between Your Body Mass Index and Life Expectancy

The Undeniable Link Between Your Body Mass Index and Life Expectancy New research in weight and fitness has suggested that your body mass index and life expectancy are interlinked more than you imagined. This means the more underweight or obese you are, the less chance you have of living a long and healthy life. However, being overweight or obese is more difficult for some people to manage than others. One such case is when you are dealing with excess weight and adrenal fatigue great site

What is Body Mass Index?

To determine whether a patient is of healthy weight, physicians and other healthcare specialists refer to their body mass index (BMI). This index is simply a measure of your body fat based on your current weight in relation to your current height.

A BMI ranging between 18.5 and 24.9 is said to be healthy. Meanwhile, a BMI that is less than 18.5 is classified as under a healthy weight. On the other hand, having a BMI of 25 to 29.9 is classified as overweight. Finally, a BMI of 30 and above, is classified as obese.

Keeping your weight within the healthy BMI range comes with several benefits. These include increased energy and ability to participate in more activities. You also experience less muscle and joint pain. Most importantly, you have significantly less risk for the disease. These include type two diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels, heart disease, and even certain cancers. This is precisely why a healthy BMI can readily increase your life expectancy.

Body Mass Index and Life Expectancy Rising BMI levels are a major cause for concern in the U.S. and have been linked to higher death rates. According to a recent study by the University of Pennsylvania and the Boston University School of Public Health, the increase in body mass index had significantly reduced the annual rate of improvement when it comes to U.S. death rates from 1988 to 2011. It is estimated that the reduction in the rate of mortality decline is as high as 23 percent.

In addition, rising BMI levels have also led to a reduction in life expectancy at age 40 by up to 0.9 years in 2011. It is also said to account for as many as 186,000 excess deaths per year.

These research findings clearly exhibit the undeniable link between one’s body mass index and life expectancy. Hence, no matter how many technological improvements are made to make life easier, they won’t help you live longer with a BMI out of the healthy range.

Sadly, it is not just a sedentary lifestyle that leads to unhealthy BMI levels. Daily stress is also a contributing factor. In fact, stress can cause your body to become overweight or obese while also taking a toll on your body’s adrenal glands and its related functions.

How Stress Adds to Your Waistline When your body gets stressed out, certain reactions take place inside your body. Most of the critical activities can primarily be found within your hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis.

The HPA axis consists of various interactions and relationships between the body’s hypothalamus, pituitary gland, and adrenals. As part of your body’s NeuroEndoMetabolic (NEM) Stress Response, they all work together to help you cope with any stressful situation you may encounter.

When you encounter stress, your hypothalamus secretes a certain corticotropin-releasing hormone.

This is responsible for sending a message to pituitary so that it can trigger the production of adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH). This, in turn, sends a message to the body’s adrenal glands to produce cortisol.

During times of stress, cortisol prepares your body for fight or flight. One of the ways that it does this is by raising the sugar in your bloodstream to give you enough energy to deal with the situation.

At the same time, your adrenals release adrenaline, a hormone that raises your heart rate and increases your blood pressure.

All these interactions continue until your body reaches the correct hormonal levels to deal with stress. These days, however, people are often subjected to constant sources of stress. Because of this, the body ends up signaling for more and more cortisol until it reaches its maximum production level. And at some point, the body becomes unable to produce the cortisol your body needs to respond to stress.

These prolonged stress episodes also cause the body to experience significant hormonal imbalance.

In the early stages, you may only experience fatigue. When you do nothing to remedy your situation, however, your condition can eventually evolve to the more serious Adrenal Fatigue Syndrome (AFS).

When suffering from AFS, your HPA axis becomes dysregulated. This state of hormonal imbalance has been associated with obesity. One study conducted by the University College London found that participants with high BMI levels and the highest cortisol levels were also the most likely to be unable to lose weight. Based on this, it is clear that stress can impact a person’s body mass index and life expectancy quite directly.

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