Impact of Obesity on Cardiovascular diseases

Obesity and Diet

The role of diet is crucial in the development and prevention of cardiovascular disease and is the key modifiable risk factor for heart diseases. The obesity is an epidemic which is spreading from low- to the middle-income countries as a result of new dietary habits and sedentary ways of life, fuelling chronic diseases and premature mortality.

This sneaky inflammation and the inflammatory factors when released increase the risk of developing atherosclerosis and the build-up of plaque in the walls of the arteries. Obesity also releases substances in the blood that can make plaque rupture, which then leads to heart attacks. The extra weight carrying does put the heart under increased stress, in particular during the relaxation phase of the cardiac cycle, which is known as the diastole. As the heart fills with blood, there’s higher pressure in the heart valves, which with over time, can lead to causing people to have heart failure symptoms.

Association between Obesity and Cardiovascular outcomes

As Obesity increases there are adverse cardiac events occurring in many ways, which may be indirectly mediated through risk factors associated with metabolic syndrome like diabetes, dyslipidemia, glucose intolerance, hypertension, and or effects from sleep disorders associated with obesity.  Metabolic syndrome is associated with central or abdominal obesity, which is associated with the distribution of fat predominantly in the abdominal viscera rather than the extremities in the body. Waist circumference or waist-hip ratio is useful ways of assessing this type of fat distribution and increased values confer additional cardiovascular risk. In abdominal obesity, there is an increase in the level of various inflammatory markers along with the occurrence of a prothrombotic state. The Obese patients have increased concentrations of many adipokines and other chemical mediators like interleukin-6, resistin, plasminogen activator inhibitor-1, tumor necrosis factor-alpha, retinol binding protein, acylation stimulating protein, lipoprotein lipase, cholesteryl ester transport protein, estrogens, leptin, angiotensinogen, and insulin-like growth factor-1, but these proteins have various adverse effects on the cardiovascular system by creating a pro-inflammatory and prothrombotic state as well as causing endothelial damage and vascular hypertrophy. There is also a higher incidence of sleep apnea/hypoventilation syndromes in obesity, which can also affect the heart in different ways.

Obesity also poses considerable challenges in making a precise cardiovascular diagnosis because of limitations in the physical examination as well as with various investigations like imaging studies, electrocardiograms (ECGs), and cardiac catheterization.

The direct effect of Obesity on the heart in obese individual results in cardiomyopathy which is also known as the adipositas cordis. Initially, it increases the fat content of the heart because of a metaplastic phenomenon and is not an infiltrative process. The various tissues of the heart, like the atrioventricular node, sinus node, right bundle branch, and the myocardium near the atrioventricular ring, are replaced by fat cells. The conduction defects can occasionally occur in the sinoatrial block, bundle branch block, and, rarely, an atrioventricular block which results in irregular bands of adipose tissue which may separate and cause pressure-induced atrophy in the myocardial cells. These adipose cells surrounding the heart valves may also secrete active molecules like adipokines, which indirectly cause injurious effects on the adjacent myocardial cells or the heart cells. Accumulation of triglycerides in nonfat cells like myocytes can also directly cause cell dysfunction due to lipotoxicity.

Heart Disease and Obesity Treatment

In addition to weight loss, the sodium restriction may be helpful in the treatment of heart disease, since high intake of sodium increases fluid retention in the body. There a number of series of medically supervised weight loss programs, starting from alterations in dietary and physical habits to pre-packed meals, pharmacotherapy and weight loss surgery, which can be used to make an impact on both cardiovascular diseases and obesity.

By Blocking Single Gene, Obesity Could Be Prevented

Obesity may be a major worldwide health epidemic that's evaluated to decrease life expectancy by 6–20 a long time, and is related with an increased risk for cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and cancer. The regulation of whole-body digestion system includes the integration of multiple organ systems, and disrupting this homeostatic balance underlies the developing epidemic in obesity, metabolic disease, and associated comorbidities.

Researchers have long worked to develop approaches that can boost non-shivering thermogenesis (NST)—the process by which calories are used as heat, rather than stored as fat—as a mechanism to burn excess calories and so offer assistance treat obesity. In any case, the body operates numerous feedback mechanisms that generally act to suppress unnecessary caloric consumption. In evolutionary terms, these forms have helped to preserve energy in times of hardship. Mammals have had to cope with pressures of limited nourishment resources and environmental exposure, developing mechanisms for both long-term storage of calories and their use for functions such as thermogenesis when required.

When a single gene called as the RCAN1 was removed in mice and in turn were fed, they failed to gain weight, even after gorging on high-fat foods for prolonged periods. A comparative approach that restrains this quality will too be compelling with people to combat corpulence and genuine diseases like diabetes. The study used a large genetic screen in rodents to identify novel genetic candidates which will cause obesity, potentially paving the way for new sedate therapies. We know a lot of individuals battle to lose weight or indeed control their weight for a number of different reasons. The discoveries in this study may mean creating a pill which would target the function of RCAN1 and may result in weight loss.

Obesity could be a major worldwide health plague, resulting in expanded hazard of genuine maladies like sort 2 diabetes, and heart infection, but roads for compelling helpful medications are lacking. There are two sorts of fat within the human body – brown fat burns vitality, whereas white fat stores vitality. Blocking RCAN1 makes a difference to convert undesirable white fat into brown

fat, showing a potential treatment method within the fight against obesity. We have already developed an arrangement of drugs that target the protein that this quality makes, and we are present in the handle of testing them to see on the off chance that they repress RCAN1 and whether they might speak to potential new anti-obesity drugs. In light of our results, the drugs we are developing to target RCAN1 would burn more calories whereas individuals are resting.

It implies the body would store less fat without the requirement for an individual to reduce food utilization or work out more. Brown fat tissue is especially inexhaustible in newborns and in hibernating mammals. It additionally shows and metabolically active in adult people, but its predominance diminishes as human’s age. Its primary work is thermoregulation. In expansion to warm created by shivering muscle, brown fat tissue produces heat by non-shivering thermogenesis. The researchers say these discoveries open up a potentially simple treatment but further considers are required to determine in case they translate the same comes about to people.