Cutting fat between young adults and mid-life can reduce half your risk of dying prematurely, a new study shows.
Reductions in body mass index (BMI) between the ages of 25 and 40 are critical to living a long life, US researchers said.
People whose BMIs went from the ‘obese’ range in early adulthood to less than ‘seriously overweight’ in middle life reduced the risk of dying by 54 percent, they report.
Weight loss after middle age does not significantly reduce the risk of death, however, shows that people are best advised to fight fat in the middle of life.
Changes in weight between young adults and mid-life can have significant consequences for a person’s risk of premature death
Carrying extra fat can lead to cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and even dementia in later life.
About one-eighth of early deaths in the U.S. can be attributed to a higher BMI at any point between early and mid-adulthood.
While in England the number of obese people in the last 20 years has almost doubled from 6.9 million to 13 million, according to Diabetes UK – about 29 per cent of the total English adults.
‘The results indicate a significant opportunity to improve population health through primary and secondary obesity prevention, especially at younger ages,’ said study author Dr Andrew Stokes, assistant professor of global health at Boston University School of Public Health in the US.
The researchers used data from 1998 to 2015 for 24,205 participants in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.
Also known as NHNES, the program is designed to assess the health and nutritional status of adults and children in the U.S. over generations through interviews and physical assessments.
Participants were between 40 and 74 years old when they entered the study, at which point they had taken their BMI.
All participants selected for the study had also taken their BMI at the age of 25.
Researchers then analyzed the link between BMI change and the likelihood of a participant dying during the observed period, and checked for other factors such as their gender, education level and whether or not they already smoked.
They found that participants whose BMIs went from the ‘obese’ range at age 25 to the ‘overweight’ range in middle life were 54 percent less likely to die than participants whose BMIs remained in the ‘obese’ range.
These participants who went from ‘obese’ to ‘overweight’ had a risk of death closer to that of participants whose BMIs were around in the ‘overweight’ range.
Lowest mortality was among individuals whose BMI remained within the normal as ‘healthy’ range, which is considered to be between 18.5 and 24.9.
The researchers estimated that 3.2 percent of the deaths in the study would have occurred if anyone with a BMI in the ‘obese’ range at age 25 was able to reach their BMIs after mid-life after ‘ overweight ‘range.
In the UK, the number of obese people has almost doubled in the last 20 years from 6.9 million to 13 million, Diabetes UK reported late last year
However, weight loss was generally rare – only 0.8 percent of participants had BMIs that went from ‘obese’ to the ‘overweight’ range.
No significant reduction in risk of death for participants who lost weight in old age can be because weight loss during this time is more often linked to a deteriorating health of an aging person.
Although it does not leave until middle age to start losing some substantial weight, it is not advisable, the study gives some hope that it is not all hope is gone as we approach midlife.
The team did not find a set age at which middle age entered, but simply a general trend in terms of earlier versus later adulthood.
The study participants were defined as having ‘midlife’ mainly between the ages of 37 and 55, but 44 on average.
The research team believes that it is more advantageous to lose weight in the earlier part of adulthood rather than the later part of adulthood.
“Although this study focused on preventing premature death, maintaining a healthy weight will also reduce the burden of many chronic diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, and even cancer,” said the co-author of the study Dr. JoAnn Manson, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.
The study was published in JAMA Network Open.
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