A new study found that participants whose body mass indexes (BMIs) went from the “obese” range in early adulthood down to the “overweight” range by their midlife halved their risk of an early death.
However, weight loss after midlife didn’t significantly reduce a person’s risk of early death. In fact, a study published last year found that weight loss in middle and older age “was significantly related to increased mortality risk”. Although, this likely because weight loss later in life is often a sign of worsening health, forbes.com reported.
“The present study provides important new evidence on the benefit of maintaining a healthy weight across the life course,” said lead author Wubin Xie, a postdoctoral associate in global health at Boston University School of Public Health.
The study, published in the journal JAMA Network Open, included 24,205 participants between the ages of 40 and 74 and used data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey — a nationally representative annual survey that includes interviews, physical examinations and blood samples, to gauge the health of US citizens.
The researchers used the BMI’s of the participants at age 25, 10 years before they entered the study as well as their BMIs at the time of the study to analyze the relationship between BMI change and the likelihood that a participant died during the study.
After controlling for factors like sex, past and current smoking, and education level, they found that study participants whose BMIs went from the “obese” to “overweight” were 54 percent less likely to have died than participants whose BMIs stayed in the “obese” range.
In fact, people who went from “obese” to “overweight” had a risk of death closer to that of participants whose BMIs had been in the “overweight” range all along.
“The results indicate an important opportunity to improve population health through primary and secondary prevention of obesity, particularly at younger ages,” said study corresponding author Andrew Stokes.
Iran daily