Extra pounds cost extra years of healthy living

27 March 2019 - Being overweight or obese represents a serious health risk, and in many countries has replaced smoking as the most common preventable cause of death. Excessive bodyweight contributes to the development of type 2 diabetes, heart and circulatory diseases and encourages the growth of certain types of tumours, contributing to a shorter life expectancy. Investigations have shown that even people who are a little overweight will lose years off their life, compared to people of normal weight. The impact increases with the growth of excess weight and, for seriously obese people, can even lead to a life expectancy that is cut ten years shorter. However, it is not just a person’s lifespan that is shortened, the number of years enjoyed in good health also suffers.

Researchers at the University of Helsinki have tried to quantify this loss. To do this, they investigated data from more than 120,000 people and calculated the number of healthy years of life remaining for a 40-year-old person before they developed a chronic illness. They came to the conclusion that a 40-year-old person of normal weight could expect an average of 29.4 years of good health, irrespective of gender. By contrast, people with a BMI of between 25 kg/m² and 30 kg/m² developed a chronic illness on average one year earlier. This comparison continues to grow with increasing body weight. According to these results, men with slight obesity and a BMI between 30 kg/m² and 34.9 kg/m² will lose 3.9 healthy years of life, while women will lose 2.7 years. In the case of medium (35 kg/m² - 39,9 kg/m²) or serious obesity (> 40 kg/m²), men can lose as much as 8.5 healthy years and 7.3 for women.

The negative effects of being overweight are further reinforced with the combination of other factors, such as smoking or a sedentary lifestyle. An inactive lifestyle will predominantly affect men with a BMI of more than 35 kg/m², as they can lose up to 11 years of life, compared to men without these risk factors. With the combination of being overweight and smoking, it can increase to as much as 14 years. Additional effects have also been shown for women, although they do not appear to be as pronounced. For women, the loss of healthy years for both lifestyle combinations is approximately nine years.

Being overweight is often played down and overlooked, but it represents an important and preventable cause of illness and premature death. For this reason, it is critical to identify and address weight problems early on in life, to be able to deal with them more easily. Maintaining a healthy weight is valuable in many respects. As well as the positive effects on physical performance and general well-being, it leads to a longer, and most of all, healthier life.

Image 1 © “taa22” / Adobe Stock

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Extra pounds cost extra years of healthy living

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