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Page 18 | Abby's Magazine | instagram.com/abbyshealthfood By Dr. Dan Durrieu and Alexandra Durrieu 39.6% of U.S. adults are obese. Another 31.6% are overweight and 7.7% are severely obese. That means that 78.9% of the United States population is overweight. Why should you care about your weight or maintaining your healthy weight? Why does everyone always talk about weight? Well, let's break it down by bodily systems. First, let's dive into the nervous system. Obesity leads to high blood pressure and high blood cholesterol. The result of high blood pressure is a stroke. How does high blood pressure lead to a stroke? Well, when you have high blood pressure this means your blood vessels are taken up by other substances such as cholesterol (plaque in your vessels) and interrupt the flow of blood to circulate all over your body. This includes your brain. When your brain doesn't receive blood due to this high blood pressure, then that's where you can get a stroke. A stroke can then result in damage to the nervous system and cause the brain to lose its ability to control the body. Let's then talk about the digestive system. Obesity has been known to increase your risk of developing GERD (gastroesophageal reflux disease). GERD is when your stomach acid that helps you break down food, crawls up into the esophagus and causes you to have acid reflux. A complication of GERD is Barett's Esophagus which is a type of cancer. Let's give examples on two different meals that you can eat and how the body reacts to these meals. The first example being a piece of freshwater salmon in a lemon herb sauce accompanied with garlic green beans and a Mediterranean quinoa salad. Salmon is rich in omega-3 fatty acids which have been shown to reduce inflammation and lower blood pressure, it also is rich in vitamin D (helps the body absorb and retain calcium and phosphorus which we need for bone growth/strength), potassium (helps your nerves and heart muscles to function well and helps move nutrients and waste around your body's cells), iron (good for your red blood cells to carry oxygen from the lungs to all parts of the body), and vitamin B12 (plays an essential role in red blood cell formation, cell metabolism, nerve function, and the production of DNA). Now I just named everything in the salmon and only the salmon, imagine all the vitamins and minerals in the green beans that are a vegetable and the quinoa that is full of healthy carbohydrates and proteins? Let's move on to a different example such as Chicken nuggets with French fries specifically from McDonald's. In the chicken nuggets the ingredients are white boneless chicken, water, vegetable oil (canola oil, corn oil, soybean oil, hydrogenated soybean oil), enriched flour, bleached wheat flour, yellow corn flour, vegetable starch (modified corn, wheat rice, pea, corn), salt, leavening, spices, yeast extract, lemon juice solids, dextrose, natural flavors. Vegetable oil can cause inflammation and disrupt hormone signaling in ways that lead to increased risk of heart disease, neurodegenerative diseases (such as Parkinson's, dementia, Alzheimer's), etc. Our body works so hard to function 24/7 at its fullest potential. Your body never stops working as hard as possible until the day you pass. When we are sick our body fights the pathogen with increasing our white blood cells (WBCs), when we have a cut, our How Your Weight Can Cause You to Hold Your Adjustments