Obesity Can Shorten Your Life by Up to Three years

A comprehensive study found that being overweight can shorten you life span by one year, while obesity can cost you up to three years of your life. Researchers found that people in the normal BMI range had the lowest risk of dying prematurely.

However, the study found that the death rates also increased for those below the “normal” range and the mildly overweight.

According to the recent research, the risk of dying from all causes rose as the body mass index went up. For instance, those mildly overweight or with a BMI reading between 25.0 and 27.5 risk losing 1.07 years of their lives.

Those mildly obese (BMI: 30 to 35) risk losing 1.45 years of their life spans; the severely obese with a BMI higher than 35 risk losing nearly 2 years, while the morbidly obese (BMI above 40) could see their life span shrink by 2.76 years.

Study authors noted that their meta-analysis which included observations on people worldwide challenges previous believes that being overweight or mildly obese does not impact life span. The findings also challenge the so-called “obesity paradox” which suggests that more body fat has a protective effect on metabolism in healthy people.

Researchers deemed the paradox purely speculative and hypothetical.

Still the risk of premature death dropped suddenly in overweight and obese people aged 70 or older. According to researchers, the risk of early death was more prominent in younger population, i.e. those in the 35-49 age range, than in the older one, i.e. those in the 70-89 range.

Researchers also found that overweight and obese men had a higher risk of premature death than their female counterparts.

Scientists that reviewed the research paper, however, said that study should be taken with a pinch of salt. They noted that it is yet unclear whether we should apply the newly found link between unhealthy BMI and early death to the general population.

NIH researcher David Berrigan and two fellow researchers who were not involved in the study wrote in an accompanying paper that more research needs to be done. They also noted that the findings cannot be generalized as smoking habits and other risk factors for early death were not taken into account in the meta-analysis.

The latest analysis was based on more than 200 studies, which were conducted after 1970, from 32 countries. The study also revealed that the risk of premature death was higher in the underweight and severely obese in Europe than in Asia.

Study results were published July 13 in the journal Lancet.

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Karen Jackson

Karen Jackson has always been passionate about technology. All the way through high-school she immersed herself in computers and web-design. Her ambitious nature helped her become a pro in Adobe Photoshop only by watching online videos and working with the program herself. This is also the program that she mostly uses in the creation of websites at her work-place. Technological innovation and gadgets that push the boundaries of what we are comfortable with have always fascinated her, so expect to see some weird gadget reviews coming from her.