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Obesity As Bad As Cigarettes For Life Expectancy, Study Finds

Canadian researchers attempted to quantify the danger of obesity and found that being obesity can take up to eight years off of your life, and put you in poor health for up to 19 years before death.

Researchers analyzed data on about 4,000 people of varying weights and used the information to create a computer model estimating the risk of developing cardiovascular and disease. The computer model also analyzed how weight affects an individual’s life expectancy, Fox News reported.

The researchers used data collected from the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which combines physical exams and diagnostic tests with personal interviews.

Researchers found that severely obese men between the ages of 20 and 39 lost 8.4 years compared to counterparts of a healthy weight. Women, meanwhile, lost 6.1 years of life, the BBC reported.

The findings, published in the Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology, found that men experienced 18.8 more years of poor health if they are overweight, or 19.1 years for women.

Older men and women in their 60s and 70s lost just a single year of life for being obese, but suffered 7 years of poor health.

[quote text_size=”small” author=”– Professor Steven Grover” author_title=”Lead author of study”]

The pattern is clear. The more an individual weighs and the younger their age, the greater the effect on their health, as they have many years ahead of them during which the increased health risks associated with obesity can negatively impact their lives.

[/quote]

People are considered overweight if they have a body mass index (BMI) of 25 to 29.9, while individuals are obese if they have a BMI of 30 or more. A BMI of more than 35 is classified as morbidly obese. A healthy BMI is between 18.5 and 25. Body mass index is considered a reliable indicator of body fat for most individuals.

More than one-third of adults in the United States, or almost 79 million people, are considered obese, the Huffington Post reported.

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