A new study suggests that one of out five deaths are linked to excess weight. The research study is refueling an argument again about how many deaths are actually caused by obesity.
Researchers associated with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggest that five percent of deaths in the U.S. per year is linked to obesity. In the past, some national health experts say that it might be a miscalculation because of the methodology used for the analysis.
The recent study reported that 18 percent or one in five deaths among African-American and White in the U.S., ages 40 to 85, are either obese or overweight.
Thirty-six percent or one third of Americans are overweight or obese, which is approximately 35 pounds greater than the normal weight. Obesity puts people at risk for heart disease, type II diabetes, cancer and other diseases. Accounting obesity-related deaths is a developing science as researchers use a variety of statistical models to arrive in such estimates.
Ryan Masters, one of the researchers who conducted the research wrote in the report that the rate of mortality related to obesity is greater than the previous estimates because he accounted for serious health complications of obesity in older adults and greater rates of obesity in younger generations of American.
With the use of the new statistical models to data from a national interview survey, Masters and his co-researchers estimated that between 1986 and 2006, five percent of deaths among black men, 27 percent of deaths among black women, 16 percent of deaths among white men and 22 percent of deaths among white women could be credited to being obese or overweight.
A professor of health policy an Emory University named Ken Thorpe told USA Today in an interview that the researchers of this new study didn’t consider factors like smoking, alcohol use and health insurance.
Still, the bottom line is a healthy weight and well-being should be maintained whether you are obese or not.
The findings was published in the American Journal of Public Health.
