Obesity May Take Away Almost a Decade of Your Life!

Obesity is one the greatest threats to human health. Diseases like diabetes, high blood sugar levels, increased cholesterol levels and a range of cardiovascular diseases have been linked to obesity. According to a recent report issued by the World Health Organization, obesity is to blame for nearly half a million cases of cancer a year, with overweight women at a far greater risk than men.Nutritionists and health experts have advocated in favour of maintaining healthy body weight and body mass index. According to our Health and Nutrition expert, Dr. Shikha Sharma, "Obesity can trigger a range of diseases from hypertension to polycystic ovaries in women. When a person suffers from such ailments it automatically takes away years from his life. Obesity in children and young people should be checked. It can adversely affect their growth, from damaging their bone structure to altering levels of insulin."A recent study published in The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology journal associates obesity with a person's life expectancy. According to a team of experts from Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC) and McGill University in Montreal, obesity can cut short your life expectancy by up to 8 years and can take away almost two decades of good health from a person's life. One of the key areas on which the study focused was to examine the effects of obesity on young people. According to experts, young people who are obese are at a greater risk of falling susceptible to health-related issues later on in life. "The pattern is clear - the more an individual weighs and the younger their age, the greater the effect on their health. In terms of life-expectancy, we feel being overweight is as bad as cigarette smoking," said lead author Dr. Steven Grover, a Clinical Epidemiologist at RI-MUHC."Our team has developed a computer model to help doctors and their patients better understand how excess body weight contributes to reduced life expectancy and premature development of heart disease and diabetes," Grover added.Grover and his colleagues used data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (from years 2003 to 2010) to develop a model that estimates the annual risk of diabetes and cardiovascular disease in adults with different body weights. This data from almost 4,000 individuals was also used to analyze the contribution of excess body weight to years of life lost and healthy years of life lost. They compared overweight and obese people against people with normal weight in terms of life expectancy. The estimates were applied to people aged between 20 and 79.The team concluded that with an increase in a person's BMI score an expected loss in years was determined. According to the study, Individuals who had a body mass index (BMI) from 25 to 29.9 were estimated to lose between zero and three years of expected life. Between 0.8 and 5.9 years of life were lost for obese people with a BMI of 30 to 34.9.The extremely obese, with a BMI of 35 or more, lost between 0.9 and 8.4 years of life expectancy. The greatest loss in expected lifespan was seen among those aged between 20-39. On the other hand, the loss was smaller and in some cases almost negligible among those who were only overweight. The biggest loss was among women who were extremely obese and aged between 20-40 years. The least loss was among men who were overweight and aged between 60 and 79 years. In addition to this, healthy life-years lost were two to four times higher for overweight and obese individuals as compared to those who had a healthy weight which can be defined as BMI scores ranging between18.5-25.However, the warning should be treated as conservative because the study only factored in two obesity-related diseases, and left out others like cancer, liver, kidney and respiratory diseases.

With inputs from PTI