Obesity could shorten life
2005-03-17 10:40
Washington - The explosion in obesity in the United States, especially in children, will likely cut life expectancy, reversing two centuries of uninterrupted progress, the New England Journal of Medicine said in a study released on Wednesday.
The excess weight problems and obesity now affecting almost two-thirds of Americans is increasing heart attack, cancer and diabetes risk, according to researchers.
"The long-term consequences of the child obesity epidemic have yet to be seen," said David Ludwig, a researcher with the Boston Children's Hospital and co-author of the study.
"The tsunami of childhood obesity has not yet hit the shore - it takes many years for complications to develop," said Ludwig.
"If the clock starts ticking at age 12 or 14, the consequences to public health are potentially disastrous - imagine heart attack or kidney failure becoming a relatively common condition of young adulthood."
Researchers underlined the unprecedented increase in children's diabetes due to obesity which the study's authors estimated has shortening life expectancy so far by up to nine months.
Professory Jay Olshansky, epidemiologist with the University of Illinois in Chicago who led researchers in the work, forecasts a two to five-year reduction in average longevity of Americans over the next few decades due to the rapid increase in obesity levels.
The effects of obesity on the US mortality rate could even end up hitting harder than either cancer or cardiovascular illness, the two main causes of death today, he said.
According to scientists, increase in mortality may even cancel out any longevity advantage gained through progress in biomedical technology.
Latest estimates published in late February by the Centres for Disease Control showed life expectancy peaked at 77.6 years in the United States in 2003, compared with 77.3 in 2002.