Do fat people really need to lose weight?

Fat is the most common denominator among overweight people. Even a healthy, overweight bodybuilder knows that fact by heart. You cannot be overweight unless you are stashing some fat, somewhere in your body.  Where fat is stored is the real problem with being overweight. Say you have plenty of fat that does not block your blood vessels. In that case, your chances of living healthier life are much better than someone who has much less fat than you, yet with damaged and hardened arteries. Of course that scenario is practicable. Because, you could accumulate plenty of fat in a short time by over eating and exercising and before your blood vessels have a chance to be damaged or hardened. On the other hand, a smoker with much lower fat content might have greater damage to his/her blood vessels. Damaged walls attract fat to deposit and harden the vital blood vessels. Imagine pumping blood into tubes made of lead compared to tubes made of elastic material. The lead tubes shake and rattle with the flow of blood. The elastic tubes give and take to allow smooth streaming of blood flow. 



Atherosclerosis is the fancy word for such scenario.  In layman terms, atheroma is the clotted blood that ensues after an injury to the wall of the blood vessel. The wall deploys the clot to seal the wound and prevent blood loss. The blood vessel wall then heals with scar: sclerosis. 

You get the message: atherosclerosis.

The healed blood vessels are less vibrant than the initially healthy vessels. If you haven't driven on New York streets you might have missed the true meaning of atherosclerosis as applied to heavily visited roads, where pots and holes keep coming  back as soon as they have been filled and sealed, by asphalt and gravel.


Let us assume that weight loss will reduce the chances of developing atherosclerosis. Could weight loss reverse the already damaged vessels?

First, damaged and sclerosed blood vessels are amenable to reversal. That is termed vascular neogenesis or the new growth of blood vessels. But weight loss does not do that. Only exercise could cause blood vessels to regenerate after consistent and sustained stimulation of the genes by the enzymes generated during exercise. Therefore, exercising for the sake of losing weight does not cut the mustard. Exercising for bettering your health does.

So, how would you know whether losing weight by exercise is equivalent to getting healthier?

That takes us to the underlying cause of overweight, which is the impaired respiration due to lack of exercise. The poor respiration undermines the burning of fat, leading to overweight. Thus, getting healthier amounts to being able to breathe comfortably, whether you were rested and strained. If stress causes you to run out of breath, then you have some way to go to improve your health.



Now, you got my point: Exercise to breathe better and maintain such ease of breathing as long as you live?



However, not every one who exercises is truly doing more good. I know many people who are more miserable because of exercise than without it. You simply cannot benefit from exercise if you do not have the heart and passion for it. Because if you fulfill your obligation to exercise on daily basis for the sake of staying healthy, what good is your health if you lack passion for the most essential function that animals were created to perfect?

The more you indulge in exercise, the easier it is to decipher its hidden secrets. One such great secret is the enhancement of the chest and shoulder frames such that the heart and lungs could maintain vibrant breathing and circulation. While that secret is easy to disclose, it still remains a secret because many people forget to combine the exercises that tie the heart and lungs to the locomotive limbs. For example, if you could breathe and circulate your blood efficiently, you still need to move lively such that you could breathe and circulate during extremes of motion.

Believe me, no commercial advertiser would dare to sell you stuff that require extremes of motion, for fear of losing your patronage out of your resentment to extremes. But, whether you like it or not, you must live with the extremes of motion during coughing, laughing, bearing down, climbing stairs, or sneezing. You cannot wear a belt around your belly before you have to sneeze because you cannot predict such moments of extremes of motion.

Once, I got an unexpected hug from a fellow, whom I have not seen for sometime, after I commented on her loss of weight. She swore that she did not lose an ounce but thanked me for such uplifting observation. Her logic was that; since her weight did not change, therefore she did not slim down. Mine was that; she slimmed down because she gained more muscles and lost more fat and became more agile.

So, is a fried egg cannot be unfried, could weight loss alone reverse the damaged blood vessels?

Vascular neogenesis could unfry the fried eggs by replacing the damaged blood vessels by new capillaries.