A growing amount of data implies that excess weight facilitates the development of several health issues like joint diseases, high blood pressure and cardiac problems, and adds to your chances of having cancer and post operative morbidity. Furthermore, being overweight or obese is suggested to foster gastro-esophageal reflux disease (GERD).
Compared with people with normal weight, overweight individuals with a body mass index of 25 kg/m2 to 30 kg/m2 are fifty percent more likely to have GERD, and obese individuals with a body mass index greater than 30 kg/m2 are twice as likely to have the disease.
Furthermore, the chances of getting GERD seemed to rise in a dose-response relationship with the ballooning of weight. An increase of 3.5 body mass index units leads to a 2.7 times increased risk of GERD. In contrast, a decrease of 3.5 kg/m2 of BMI cut your chances of having GERD by 40%.
The system causing the relation of obesity with GERD is still unknown. But, it was observed that obesity has been linked to more intra-abdominal pressure, impaired gastric emptying, lesser lower esophageal sphincter pressure, and more incidence of transient sphincter relaxation, which can all advance to more esophageal acid exposure.
Obesity and being overweight increases your chances of having acidic disorders of the esophagus. It was recommended that upcoming researches must look at the means by which obesity and being overweight bring about these complications, and also the possible outcomes of losing weight. In the meantime, however, it is prudent to counsel all overweight patients who present with GERD-related diseases that weight loss may help improve symptoms.
It was observed in a research as well that there is an obvious connection between BMI and GERD in both sexes. As oppose to men with a BMI lower than 25, the risk factor for GERD is 3.3 times higher to men who have a BMI higher than 35. Extremely overweight women have 6.3 times more chances of suffering from gastro-esophageal reflux disease compared to those with average weight.
It is even more dangerous to those females who have a BMI higher than 35 who have used estrogen-only hormone substitutes. They are 33 times more at risk of suffering from GERD as oppose to those women who have average weight and are not using hormone replacements.
This study shows a clear link between GERD and with both being overweight, and estrogen use in women. It is known that obese women have an increased production of estrogen-like substances in their fatty tissue, which may explain why weight loss helps reduce the risk of gastro-esophageal reflux disease. So, this provides another reason to attack overweight aggressively.
Extra weight places pressure on your stomach, which can stop the lower esophageal sphincter from opening and closing properly.
If you are fat, weight loss of just 10 to 15 pounds can prevent gastro-esophageal reflux disease. Doctors also advise that people who have gastro-esophageal reflux disease wear loose clothing to keep additional pressure off their stomachs.
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