William Atkins
Wednesday, 18 March 2009 19:19
Science -
Health
Page 3 of 4
Even worse, a BMI of 40 to 50, which is classified as “severe obesity,” reduces a person’s life expectancy by about 10 years.
Specifically, they stated in the abstract to their paper,
“Above this range, positive associations were recorded for several specific causes and inverse associations for none, the absolute excess risks for higher BMI and smoking were roughly additive, and each 5 kg/m2 higher BMI was on average associated with about 30% higher overall mortality…”
That is, for an increase of 5 points in BMI, there was about a:
30% higher increase in overall mortality;
40% increase in vascular death;
60 to 120% increase for diabetic, renal, and hepatic mortality;
10% increase for neoplastic death; and
20% increase for respiratory and for “other” mortality.
They also stated,
“Below the range 22.5—25 kg/m2, BMI was associated inversely with overall mortality, mainly because of strong inverse associations with respiratory disease and lung cancer.”
The researchers also added,
“These inverse associations were much stronger for smokers than for non-smokers, despite cigarette consumption per smoker varying little with BMI.”
Page four contains comments from Dr. Peter Weissberg, whose group supported this research.
