Being overweight or obese increases the susceptibility to a gamut of metabolic disorders, including diabetes. India is the world's third most obese nation after US and China. In urban cities like Delhi, about 22 per cent women and about 18 per cent men are obese. Around 85% of the patients with diabetes are overweight or obese.
So, the question is, how does an increase in body weight affect the outcomes of diabetes? An overweight or obese individual develops an energy saturation in his/her cells, which causes resistance to the action of the insulin hormone and thus reduces the glucose uptake in the cells. This effect of insulin resistance results in increased blood glucose level, which causes toxicity to the blood vessels, and resultant damage to organs like the kidney, eye, heart, brain, nerves, etc. These fat stores secrete several messenger proteins, which cause inflammatory distress…
