The United States is in the midst of an obesity epidemic. As a result, the media is full of stories about how to eat and exercise so that we can lose weight and avoid health problems such as diabetes, heart disease, stroke and cancer.
Because obesity is so prominent, we often avoid the people on the other side of the scale -- the underweight. And we're not talking about people with eating disorders or dangerous habits such as smoking that keep them thin; in this article, we're concerned about those who just can't put on any weight no matter how hard they try. We might write these people off and say they're lucky that they don't have to worry about their skinny jeans fitting, but as it turns out, people with a body mass index (BMI) of less than 18.5 have their own set of health problems to worry about.