Staff Report
ISLAMABAD: Excess weight or obesity is more deadly than previously believed. According to a new study, it boosts the risk of death by anywhere from 22 percent to 91 percent.
The findings, published in the journal of Population Studies, contradicts prevailing wisdom that excess weight boosts death risk only in extreme cases.
The study found that groups with higher body mass index have higher mortality rates, contrary to several studies that found that heart disease, diabetes, and high blood pressure (which are often associated with being overweight) increase mortality risk.
“The conventional wisdom is that elevated body mass index generally does not raise mortality risk until you reach to very high levels and that there are actually some survival benefits of being overweight,” said the author Ryan Masters, Associate Professor of sociology at the Colorado Boulder University, US.
The researcher noted that body mass index, which scientists and doctors often use as a health measure, is based on height and weight only and does not consider differences in body composition or does not consider how long a person has been overweight.
Obesity negatively affects health
“It is a reflection of stature at a point in time. That is it,” said Masters, noting that “it is not fully capturing all of the nuances and varrying sizes and shapes the body comes in.”
To observe what happened when those nuances were taken into account, Masters looked at data from 17,784 people, including 4,468 deaths.
He found that a full 20 percent of the sample characterized as “healthy people” weight had been in the obese or overweight category in the previous decade. When set apart, this group had a considerably worse health profile as compare to those in the category with stable weight, Medical Daily reported.
The findings confirm that BMI-related bias has “significantly affected” studies.
According to majority of the studies, the “overweight” category surprisingly has the lowest death risk. Those in the “obese” category have little or no increased risk over the so-called “healthy persons” category. And both the “underweight” (less than 18.5) and extremely obese (35 and higher) are at increased risk of death.
