Study: Being fat at 40 cuts years off life
Smoking adds to drop in life expectancy
 |
Story Tools
VIDEO
|
CNN's Dr. Sandra Fryhofer says a new report shows being obese can subtract seven years from human life (January 6)
|
| A GROWING PROBLEM |
Percentage of Americans who are obese:
1962 -- 13 percent
1980 -- 15 percent
2000 -- 31 percent
Source: CDC
|
|
(CNN) -- Two out of three Americans have an ongoing battle of the bulge, and most know all that extra weight can contribute to life-threatening ailments such as stroke, diabetes and heart disease. But just how many years will the fat take from you?
A new study shows for the first time how much life expectancy is shortened for those who are overweight or obese at 40. For smokers, the statistics are even worse.
"If you're overweight, you basically live three years less ... and if you're obese, you live approximately six to seven years less," says Dr. Robert Eckel with the American Heart Association.
Scientists have long known that overweight people have shorter life expectancies, but few large-scale studies have been able to pinpoint how many years they lose.
The study by Dutch researchers appears in Tuesday's edition of the Annals of Internal Medicine. It looks at data collected from 3,457 adults age 28 to 62 in Framingham, Massachusetts, between 1948 and 1990.
So what's the difference between overweight and obese? Doctors use body mass index -- BMI -- to measure the ratio of weight to height.
A person with a BMI of 25 or over is classified overweight, and a BMI of 30 or over means one is obese.
For example, a 40-year-old woman who is 5 feet 5 inches tall and weighs 150 pounds is considered overweight, with a BMI of 25. She can expect three years cut from her life expectancy, according to the study. If that same woman weighed 180 pounds, her BMI would be 30, she would be considered obese and would lose seven years.
Men are hit almost as hard. A 6-feet-tall man who weighs more than 184 pounds is considered overweight. If he weighed 221 pounds, he would be obese and could expect to lose six years.
Smokers who have the middle-aged spread are hit with a double-whammy
Obese smokers can subtract seven more years from their life expectancy. According to the study's figures, that means obese, smoking women will live 14 years less and men 13 years less than their nonsmoking, lower-weight neighbors.
About two-thirds of U.S. adults are overweight or obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Studies have also shown that people are getting fatter, younger.
So what's a person to do?
"The important message from this study is, let's work on prevention. Let's work with young people to prevent that increase in body fat," Eckel said.
Eckel recommends losing approximately a pound a week until you reach your ideal weight, by cutting out 500 calories a day, which is a realistic goal to set and could result in a 5 to 10 percent loss in body fat.
Copyright 2004 CNN. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Associated Press contributed to this report.
