By Virginia Pelley, Men's Journal
It's not too late to lose a bit of weight. That's what researchers in the U.K. concluded in a new study that
showed being overweight throughout adulthood isn't necessarily a
harbinger of diabetes and heart disease later in life, as long as you
turn things around by the midcentury mark.
[post_ads]The study of nearly 5,000 participants compared the current health
data of middle-aged men to what was recorded on their military service
records or gleaned from their own recall from age 21. The men who were
overweight at age 21 had a 6 percent higher chance of eventually
developing Type-2 diabetes, but the risk of diabetes for men who still
had higher body mass indexes (BMI) around age 50 was 21 percent higher
by comparison. Men who were normal weights when they were young but who
gained weight by middle age, however, increased their diabetes risk by
three times.
In other words, the effects of a high BMI early on in terms of your
diabetes risk is potentially reversible. But before you throw all your
New Year's diet plans into the bin, keep in mind that there are negative
health effects in carrying around an unhealthy weight (not to mention
that losing weight gets more difficult in middle age).
"The increased risk of diabetes associated with having a higher BMI
in early life was expressed per unit increase in BMI in early life,"
says lead author Charles Owen, a professor of epidemiology at St. George's of London "[So] the lower the BMI the better."
Losing weight in middle age, compared to having higher levels of BMI
at 21 years, marginally lowers the risk of diabetes and possibly of
stroke, but had little effect on the risk of a heart attack, Owen adds.
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A more important takeaway than fatness doesn't matter that much when
you're young is that it's pretty vital that we not be overweight by age
50, as it considerably increases the risk of diabetes, heart disease,
and stroke.
"There's growing concern that long-term exposure to higher levels of
body fat may increase risks of cardiovascular disease and Type-2
diabetes in later life," Owen says. "This is becoming increasingly
relevant as levels of body fatness and duration of exposure to higher
levels [of fatness] are increasing."
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