Even mild obesity can increase the risk of an early death

obesity can increase the risk of death
Image by photosforyou from Pixabay

Even mild obesity can increase the risk of death. You have mild obesity if you are just overweight, so if you have a BMI of between 35 and 40 you fall into this category. This BMI range means you the run the risk of type 2 diabetes and sleep apnoea. Indeed those who are severely obese are 50% more likely to die than those of a healthy weight.

An analysis of 2.8 million people in the UK found that mild obesity is enough to pose a serious risk of disease especially in later life.  The research was presented at the  European Congress on Obesity (ECO) in Glasgow. The researchers examined the health, deaths and BMI data of nearly 3 million people between January 2000 and July 2018 from the UK Clinical Practice Research Datalink. The research was funced in part by Novo Nordisk in Denmark.

The BMI is a measure that uses your height and weight to work out if your weight is healthy, according to the NHS. For most adults, an ideal BMI is in the 18.5 to 24.9 range.

The most severe assessment was that people with body mass index (BMI) of between 30 and 35 which marks them out as obese were 70% at higher risk of developing a cardiovascular event including heart failure. If your BMI was between 25 and 30 which meant you were overweight on the scale then the risk increased by 20%. A BMI of 40 to 45 which indicates morbidly obese was extremely severe.

One of the authors stated:-

“The health risks linked with having excess body weight are particularly high for type 2 diabetes and sleep apnoea.”

“With the number of people living with mild obesity almost tripling worldwide over the past 30 years (105 million people in 1975 to 650 million in 2016), our findings have serious implications for public health.”

It is known that to date two thirds of British adults have either mild obesity or are obese. The most severely obese UK citizens are likely to be 12 times as likely to suffer diabetes and 20 times more likely to suffer sleep issues. The level of arthritis also rises considerably as BMI increases.

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