by Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist
Researchers have found that being overweight at age 50 can cut a woman’s chance of being healthy in her golden years by almost 80 percent.
According to a report by the Associated Press (AP), the study, funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health and the Boston Obesity Nutrition Research Center, tracked 17,000 female nurses from 1976 until 2000. They found that for every one-point increase in their Body Mass Index (BMI), women had a 12 percent lower chance of surviving to age 70 in good health compared to women of normal weight.
Researchers defined good health as being free of chronic disease and having enough mental and physical ability to perform daily tasks like grocery shopping, vacuuming or walking up a flight of stairs.
For every 2.2 pounds a woman gained since age 18, her odds of surviving past 70 drop by five percent, researchers found. Women who were overweight at age 18 and then gained more than 22 pounds later in life had only about a 20 percent chance of surviving to age 70 in good health. The most commonly reported diseases among the unhealthy women were cancer, heart disease and diabetes.
Other studies have found similar trends in men. Qi Sun, a research associate at Harvard University and one of the study authors, said men were probably equally at risk, since fat acts largely the same way in both genders.
Experts consider people with a BMI between 19-25 to be healthy, while those from 25 to 30 are considered overweight and those over 30 are obese.
A British study published earlier this year found people with a BMI from 30 to 35 die about three years earlier than normal while those who were morbidly fat, with a BMI above 40, die about a decade earlier.
“If you are on the obesity track early in life, it could get very dangerous by the time you are middle-aged,” said Stephan Rossner, an obesity expert at Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm, to the AP.
He said it was uncertain if people could regain the health benefits of being thin if they lost weight later in life.
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