Pranava Kerala Ayurveda Clinic Weight Management Programme

What is obesity?

Overweight and obesity are defined as abnormal or excessive fat accumulation that presents a risk to health. A body mass index (bmi) over 25 is considered overweight, and over 30 is obese.

About 1.9 billion people in the world are overweight out of which about 650 million people are obese.

There are many reasons why some people have difficulty losing weight. Usually, obesity results from inherited, physiological and environmental factors, combined with diet, physical activity, and exercise choices.

The good news is that even modest weight loss can improve or prevent the health problems associated with obesity. A healthier diet, increased physical activity, and behaviour changes can help you lose weight. Prescription medications and weight-loss procedures are additional options for treating obesity.

Signs and symptoms:

Body mass index (bmi) is often used to diagnose obesity.

Bmi	Weight status
Below 18.5	Underweight
18.5-24.9	Normal
25.0-29.9	Overweight
30.0 and higher	Obesity

Asians with a bmi of 23 or higher are considered to have increased health risk.

What causes obesity?

Obesity usually results from a combination of causes and contributing factors:

Family history, lifestyle choices such as poor diet, lack of exercise, certain diseases and medications, social and economic status and age.

There are other contributing factors such as pregnancy, smoking, lack of sleep and stress.

Major complications of obesity:

The major complications of obesity include heart disease, high blood pressure, heart attack, type 2 diabetes, stroke, sleep apnoea, certain cancers, covid-19, osteoarthritis etc.

Ayurvedic view on obesity

Obesity is known as medaroga (disorder of fat tissue), which is caused by the aggravation of kapha. Kapha dosha property is explained as dense, heavy, slow, sticky, wet, and cold in nature. It governs all structure and lubrication in the mind and body apart from controlling the weight and formation of all the seven tissues – nutritive fluids, blood, fat, muscles, bones, marrow, and reproductive tissues.

According to ayurveda, toxins accumulate in medovahi srotas (fat channels), thereby leading to an increase in the production of fat tissue (meda dhatu). When the body produces more fat tissues, it causes an increase in weight.

Ayurvedic treatment regimes mainly focus on the pacification of kapha dosha in case of obesity which can be done by eliminating kapha-aggravating foods from the diet. The special detox treatments (panchakarma) focuses on cleansing the medovahi channels so that excess weight can be reduced.

Objectives of this program:

1. Weight reduction: depending on the patient, complexity and medical history, the programme objectives change accordingly. But primarily a modest goal of reducing body weight by 5-10% is set initially which can be revised as the patient responds to the treatment.
2. Reduce the associated symptoms and signs of obesity
3. Reduce the associated medical problems such as controlling diabetes, high blood pressure or hypothyroidism
4. Improve dietary control, encourage healthy eating habits
5. Improve physical activity and fitness