French researchers announced on Friday the result of their latest study, which revealed that excess weight, as in people who were obese or overweight, could actually hinder the functions of the respiratory system. In other words, the lungs may lose their ability to function properly, if all the fat accumulated along a person's waste is constantly pulling their diaphragm muscle downwards. Belly fat was most conclusively tied to this type of problems, thus adding another cause for concern on the long list of conditions generally associated with obesity and excess weight.
“We found a positive independent relationship between lung function impairment and metabolic syndrome due mainly to abdominal obesity,” French National Institute for Health and Medical Research specialist Dr. Natalie Leone says. She and her team have just published a study detailing the finds in the latest issue of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. The large-scale investigation took into account health information from more than 120,000 people in France.
What makes the French team's conclusion even worse is the fact that the direct association between the two conditions was found to exist regardless of other outside factors, such as smoking or pre-existing diseases. This means that obesity in itself causes the lungs to stop functioning properly. Physically speaking, when a constant downward force pulls down a spring, it's bound to deform it at one point, and make it lose its elasticity.
The very same thing happens with belly fat and the diaphragm. While it may not seem obvious to the average obese person, the extra weight that they carry around, namely the fat on their bellies, acts on their bodies in more ways than one. Other than pulling down on the diaphragm, it also forces the spine to arch, in order to support it. This is the same thing that happens to pregnant women, whose spine deforms slightly, in order to allow them to walk up straight, while carrying.
Leone reveals that physicians could include waist measurements in their assessments of a person's lungs from now on. “Abdominal obesity could then be highlighted on the printed report so that the physician interpreting the report could take the effect of obesity into account,” she concludes.
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