Though the words fat and obese are used all the time to refer to overweight people, most of us don’t understand the seriousness of being morbidly obese. Morbid Obesity is not just being extremely fat but is also being extremely unhealthy.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) defines a person as “obese” if he weighs at least 20 percent more than his ideal weight. Obesity becomes “morbid obesity” when it considerably heightens the risk of one or more obesity-related health conditions.

Want to know what these health threats are? Being more than 100 pounds over ideal body weight or having a body mass index (BMI) of 40 or higher:
Increases the risk of early death.
Raises the risk of diabetes and heart attack as much as 700%.
Runs a high risk of becoming “end-stage” obesity, a weight so heavy that exercise becomes impossible.
And all of us know that morbid obesity brings with it numerous social, psychological, and economic ill effects.
How serious is the problem of morbid obesity? Morbid obesity is a chronic disease that nearly 10 million people in the United States suffer from. That’s more than double the number of people who have Alzheimer’s disease. If all the morbidly obese lived in the same state, it would have nearly equaled the population of North Carolina.
Luckily, morbid obesity is not an incurable condition anymore and bariatric treatment just might be the blessing the morbidly obese were waiting for.