Digest this: heavy people may die up to 3 years early

Another of the authors, Richard Peto of Oxford University, said that being obese was far more risky for men than it was for women.

The results also showed fat men are at particular risk.

They found that each unit of increase in being overweight at age 13, generally corresponding to a 2- to 3-point increase in BMI, increased the risk of developing colon cancer 9 percent and rectal cancer 11 percent.

Being overweight or obese increase the chances of dying early, especially in men, new research has shown.

The risk of coronary heart disease, stroke, respiratory disease and cancer “are all increased”, he said. Scientists say overweight people die one year earlier than expected and that moderately obese people die up to three years prematurely in the biggest-ever analysis of such data, mostly from Europe and North America.

People described as overweight have a BMI of 25 to 29.9.

If Australia’s overweight and obese population were within the normal weight range, about one in six premature deaths could potentially be avoided, according to the authors.

According to the new study at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, overweight people lose about one year of life expectancy, and moderately obese people lose about three years of life expectancy on average. A person who is 5 foot 4 is considered obese at a weight of 174 pounds or more.

“The excess risk of premature death is about three times as big for a man who gets fat as for a woman who gets fat”, Peto said.

The authors say that assuming that the associations between high BMI and mortality are largely causal, and those who were overweight or obese lost enough weight to bring them into the normal levels of BMI, then the proportion of premature deaths decreases to about one in seven people.

But recent studies suggesting people who are fat may not have lower survival rates have led to confusion about whether obesity kills, or just causes bad health. Moreover, he explained that his team adopted a much stricter methodology when assessing samples.

Co-author Professor Sir Richard Peto, from Oxford University, said: “Obesity is second only to smoking as a cause of premature death in Europe and North America”. In Europe, the prevalence of adult obesity is 20 percent while the amount rises to 31 percent in North America. “Actually, it’s not. I think here we are reinforcing this message, and we are reinforcing the need to have public-health measures to try to implement a strategy to reduce body weight”, said Dr Di Angelantonio.

“Smoking causes about a quarter of all premature deaths in Europe and in North America, and smokers can halve their risk of premature death by stopping”.

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. The final data included 3.9 million adults.