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new study in Denmark has concluded that men who are obese from the age of 20, will die 8 years earlier than normal-weight men.
The researchers tracked the lives of more than 5,000 men between the ages of 20 and 80. They found that at any age in this range, men who are obese are twice as likely to die as those who maintain a normal weight. Experts also came to the conclusion that obesity at the age of 20 is one of the main causes of death for men under 60 years of age.
“As the obesity epidemic is still spreading rapidly, especially among children and adolescents, it is very important to find out whether obesity at a young age has an impact on this in a specific case, the likelihood of death later,” says Esther Zimmermann, lead researcher at the Institute's Copenhagen Hospital preventive medicine and biomedical sciences.
Zimmerman also said that she is not sure whether these results apply to Americans, but added that a similar study in Sweden confirmed the findings results. Zimmerman and her colleagues compared mortality rates among military conscripts, including 1,930 obese men, and a randomly selected 3,601 normal-weight men. Specialists looked at the body mass index of participants aged 20, 35 and 46, and then compared the results with the mortality rate during the subsequent follow-up period.
The body mass index is an indicator of body fat content depending on height and weight. According to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, a BMI below 18.5 means that a person is underweight, between 18.5 and 24.9 is normal weight, 25 to 29 is overweight, and more than 29 is obese.
The results were adjusted to exclude factors such as age, education and smoking. A total of 1,191 men died during the next check-up period under the age of 60. Of those who survived in their 70s, about 70 percent were not obese at age 20.
The results showed that men who had a BMI of 25 at age 20 had the lowest risk of death. Men who are slightly overweight have a slightly increased risk of early death, and for every one point increase in BMI, the risk of early death increases by 10 percent.
Zimmerman noted that it is unclear whether the risk of early death is due to the fact that a man in his 20s was obese or to the fact that he suffered from this problem for many years after. “The analysis showed that more than 70 percent of young people suffering from obesity in their 20s and in subsequent years experienced the same problem, and only 4 percent of men in the second group after a certain they began to suffer from obesity for a period of time,” said the professor.
“Obesity has turned out to be a “permanent condition”, and most likely, if men in their 20s are not obese, then the likelihood of developing it later is pretty low,” Zimmerman added. She also noted that her team plans to study which diseases are responsible for early death among obese people. The professor suspects that diseases that are directly related to obesity, including cardiovascular diseases, endocrine disorders, and some types of cancer, played an important role.
In addition, by studying the development of these diseases over time, it will be possible to understand the mechanism by which obesity affects the human body in or at another age.