Reverse Obesity Associated Heart Disease Risk With Weight Loss

Major weight loss appears to reverse most of the heart disease risks linked to obesity, according to a cross-sectional analysis of the US adult population presented at the Annual Meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD).

More than 40% of adult Americans have obesity (BMI of more than 30kg/m²) and one in 10 have severe obesity.Body weight is directly associated with heart disease risk factors.

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‘Weight loss is hard but important for cardiovascular health.’

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As BMI increases, blood pressure, bad cholesterol, other abnormal blood fats, blood sugar, and inflammation also increase. These changes increase the risk for heart disease, stroke, and death from cardiovascular disease.

However, little is known about whether the effects of obesity persist in those who subsequently achieve and maintain healthy weight.

To find out more about this, researchers analyzed cardiovascular risk factors in 20,271-non-elderly US adults (aged 20-69 years) by comparing those who had obesity in the past but had been maintaining weight for at least a year (326) to those who had a healthy weight (6,235) and those who currently have obesity (13,710).

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The study findings are published in the journal Diabetologia.

They used data from a series of cross sections, collected biennially from the 1999-2013 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey to compare the prevalence of high blood pressure, elevated blood cholesterol and type 2 diabetes between the groups.

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After adjusting for age, gender, smoking and ethnicity, researchers found that the risk of high blood pressure and elevated blood cholesterol was similar in those who used to have obesity and those who had always maintained a healthy weight.

Compared to those who were always healthy weight, people who used to have obesity had three-fold higher odds of diabetes than those who never had obesity.

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People with current obesity were seven times as likely to experience diabetes. Those who currently had obesity were also at three times greater odds of current high blood pressure and elevated blood cholesterol.

These findings are from observational associations rather than cause and effect, and they cannot rule out the possibility that other unmeasured factors (including socioeconomic status) or missing data (e.g., dietary habits, physical activity behaviors) may have affected the results.

The study relied on self-reports of disease diagnosis and medication, as well as highest-ever body weight (which might not be accurate).

Finally, this study indicates that losing weight and maintaining it can not only prevent but also reverse significant health problems.

Source-Medindia