The most extreme cases of obesity are more dangerous to health than smoking, according to the latest analysis by the National Cancer Institute (USA) based on 20 international prospective studies and published in the journal Plos Medicine . This is the largest study on the effects of class 3 or morbid obesity on mortality .
The presence of obesity has increased dramatically in several countries around the globe, reaching 30% of the world’s population. Using data from these 20 studies from the United States, Sweden, and Australia (involving 9,564 morbidly obese and 304,011 normal-weight adults), the researchers wanted to assess the overall risk of death related to a wide variety of causes, as well as the years of life expectancy lost associated with the level of morbid or extreme obesity (BMI of 40 or more)
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The conclusions are as direct as they are definitive: being overweight of 45 kilos or more reduces life expectancy by approximately 6 to 14 years, compared to people who have a healthy weight . What’s more, the risk of dying at any time increased in the morbidly obese group the more their BMI increased, mostly from causes related to heart disease, cancer, and diabetes.
Within the study, a pattern was added regarding people with a healthy weight but who smoked. Their life expectancy was shortened by almost 9 years, reaffirming that morbid obesity is more dangerous than smoking .
“This study is unlikely to encourage morbidly obese people to lose weight, as that assumes that the main reason these people do not lose weight is lack of will and I would argue that this is not the case, but it could have a beneficial effect if it leads society to change in ways that slow down the promotion of obesity and to develop aggressive treatments for morbid obesity, “says Lee Kaplan, co-author of the study.
