Study Finds Fat Kills, Casting Doubt on “Obesity Paradox”

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Study Finds Fat Kills, Casting Doubt on ‘Obesity Paradox’. Excess body weight now causes 1 in 5 of all premature deaths in America. “On average, overweight people lose about one year of life expectancy, and moderately obese people lose about three years of life expectancy,” said Emanuele Di Angelantonio from Britain’s University of Cambridge, who co-led the research. The results also showed fat men are at particular risk. This study, published in The Lancet medical journal, looked at data from more than 10.6 million people involved in 239 large studies in 32 countries over 45 years. A combined 1.6 million deaths were recorded across these studies, in which participants were followed for an average of 14 years. The researchers excluded current or former smokers, those with chronic diseases at the beginning of the study, and any who died in the first five years of follow-up. This left 4 million adults to analyze. They looked at body mass index (BMI) – an indicator of body fat calculated by dividing a person’s weight in kilograms by their height in meters squared (kg/m2). The WHO defines BMI 18.5-25 as normal, 25-30 as overweight, 30-35 as moderately obese and over 40 as severely obese. The results showed that participants with a normal BMI had the lowest premature mortality risk – of dying before the age of 70 – during the time they were followed. The risk of mortality increased significantly throughout the overweight range, with every 5 units higher BMI above 25 kg/m2 linked to a 31 percent higher risk of premature death. — Doubt over “obesity paradox”. Some previous studies found that overweight people had a slightly lower risk of death than thin people, but that may just be because many illnesses (like cancer) and non-food addictions (like smoking) cause weight loss, skewing results.

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Source by kjhine