Finally, Americans are smoking less, but they are eating more. A research says that the number of smokers in America has dropped by 20 percent over the last 15 years. However, the volume of obese Americans has almost doubled. Unfortunately, if the trend persists, the potential danger of obesity will exceed the public gains of decreased smoking.
The research has collected data from previous national health surveys dated from 1971 and onwards. The data covers hundreds of thousands of people. The researchers of the study estimated how obesity and smoking influenced the life span of people between 1990 and 2005. The rates calculated were extrapolated forward up to year 2020. The analysis suggests that obesity in 2020 will reduce the lifespan of an 18-year-old individual by 260 days (0.71 years) and prevent 332 days (0.91 years) of quality of life.
In more details, the life span increased by an average of 0.31 years, if one did not smoke while the harm of overweight was 1.02 years. The research paper predicted that American would not stop to smoke and start to regulate their weight by year 2020. Yet, generally, the average lifespan will augment with 3.76 years together with 5.16 quality years.
The Lead author Susan Steward who is an expert on aging at the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts says that “We don’t want to be alarmist,” but smoking is, in reality, worse than obesity. Smoking can cause various severe health issues while obesity will only slowly harm the body.
The study that was published in The New England Journal of Medicine, are claiming that the problem is that more people are increasing in weight compare to the numbers of individuals reducing on smoking. So on national perspective things are worsening.
The research does not expect lifespan to decrease in its pure terms. In the future medical advancement will allow obese people to live longer than today. The fact is that obese people could survive even longer if they regulated their weight.
According to Steward the research will help health officials and doctors to decide how to invest money to save more lives. Yet, some public health experts see the study as being subjective. David Williamson, who is an epidemiologist at Emory University at Atlanta, considers that the study uses some uncommon statistical indicators and that there is a potential risk for margins of errors. He doesn’t “know how seriously to take it.”
The 15 year trend line was also questioned by Williamson. For instance, the national health surveys give various harms for obesity. However, more recent data are proposing that overweight is less harmful than what doctors previously thought. People who are a little overweight are living longer than people of normal weight. Steward and Cutler did re-calculate the average lifespan by using a trend line of only 5 years and the result was significantly different. The new trend line suggested that obesity would only cause a decrease in lifespan by 37 days and 62 quality-adjusted days for an individual of 18-years-old.
Nevertheless, whether the figures are different when taking a 15 or 5 years trend line, Cutler and Steward claimed that the trend does not change. An increase in obesity will definitely overshadow the positive aspect of smoking less in the future. This remains for sure, even if the rate of obesity will augment by a tiny 0.15 percent per annum for the coming 15 years.
Source: Science Magazine and The New England Journal of Medicine
Thu, Jul 8, 2010
Anti Aging, Health And Aging, Longevity