Being
Overweight in Early in Life Leads to Physical Disabilities in Senior
Citizens
Dramatic increase in overweight and obesity in the US
may lead to an increase in physical disability among future generations
of seniors
April 7, 2009 – Being overweight when young
increases the risk of having mobility problems in old age, even if the
extra weight is lost as one ages, according to new research from the
Sticht Center on Aging at Wake Forest University School of Medicine.
“In both men and women, being overweight or obese
put them at greater risk of developing mobility limitations in old age,
and the longer they had been overweight or obese, the greater the risk,”
said lead investigator Denise Houston, Ph.D., R.D., an assistant
professor of gerontology at the School of Medicine and an expert on
aging and nutrition.
“We also found that, if you were of normal weight
in old age but had previously been overweight or obese, you were at
greater risk for mobility limitations.”
Houston added that dropping weight later in life
can lead to problems with mobility because weight loss later in life is
usually involuntary and the result of an underlying chronic condition.
The study is based on data collected in the Health,
Aging and Body Composition study, which enrolled Medicare recipients in
Pittsburgh, Pa., and Memphis, Tenn., between April 1997 and June 1998.
Participants had to be well-functioning, living in the community, and
free of life-threatening illness.
The researchers defined mobility limitation as
difficulty walking a quarter-mile or climbing 10 steps. They analyzed
information from 2,845 participants who were on average 74 years old.
Participants reported no problems with mobility at the beginning of the
study. Information on new mobility limitations was collected every six
months over seven years of follow-up.
Using participants’ body mass index (BMI), a
measurement equal to a person’s weight in kilograms divided by height in
meters squared, at different age intervals, the researchers found the
following.
● Women who were overweight or obese (BMI of 25
or greater) from their mid-20s to their 70s were nearly three times more
likely to develop mobility limitations than women who were normal weight
throughout.
● The risk for men was slightly less – they were
about 1.6 times more likely to develop mobility limitations, according
to the study.
● Women who were obese (BMI of 30 or greater) at
age 50, but not in their 70s, were 2.7 times more likely to develop
mobility limitations compared to women who were not obese throughout.
● Men who were obese at 50, but not in their
70s, were 1.8 times more likely to develop mobility limitations than men
who never carried the extra weight.
Carrying extra weight can strain joints, hinder
exercise and lead to chronic conditions, such as diabetes, arthritis and
heart disease, that are directly related to the development of mobility
limitations, Houston said.
The results are significant, Houston added, because
the elderly population in the United States is growing, and is expected
to double by the year 2030 to about 20 percent.
“Over the past couple of decades there has been a
trend towards declining rates of physical disability in older adults,”
Houston said.
“However, the dramatic increase in overweight and
obesity in the United States may reverse these declines and may lead to
an increase in physical disability among future generations of older
adults. The data suggest that interventions to prevent overweight and
obesity in young and middle-aged adults may be useful in preventing or
delaying the onset of mobility limitations later in life.”
The study, funded by the National Institute on
Aging and the Wake Forest University Claude D. Pepper Older Americans
Independence Center, appears in the April 15 issue of the American
Journal of Epidemiology.
Co-authors on the study are Jingzhong Ding, Ph.D.,
Barbara J. Nicklas, Ph.D., and Stephen B. Kritchevesky, Ph.D., all of
the School of Medicine’s Sticht Center on Aging; Tamara B. Harris, M.D.,
M.S., of the National Institute on Aging; Jung Sun Lee, Ph.D., of the
University of Georgia; Michael C. Nevitt, Ph.D. and Susan M. Rubin,
M.P.H., of the University of California; and Frances A. Tylavsky, Ph.D.,
of the University of Tennessee Health Science Center.
Information Source (prepared by Wake Forest)
Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center (www.wfubmc.edu)
is an academic health system comprised of North Carolina Baptist
Hospital, Brenner Children’s Hospital, Wake Forest University
Physicians, and Wake Forest University Health Sciences, which operates
the university’s School of Medicine and Piedmont Triad Research Park.
The system comprises 1,056 acute care, rehabilitation and long-term care
beds and has been ranked as one of “America’s Best Hospitals” by U.S.
News & World Report since 1993. Wake Forest Baptist is ranked 32nd in
the nation by America’s Top Doctors for the number of its doctors
considered best by their peers. The institution ranks in the top third
in funding by the National Institutes of Health and fourth in the
Southeast in revenues from its licensed intellectual property.
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Being
Overweight in Early in Life Leads to Physical Disabilities in Senior
Citizens