According to the findings of a large study published in the BMJ people who are lean for life have the lowest mortality, while those with a heavy body shape from childhood up to middle age have the highest mortality.
The paper entitled: Trajectory of body shape in early and middle life and all cause specific mortality: results from two prospective US cohort studies was led by a team of US researchers who tracked the evolution of body shape and associated mortality among two large cohort studies.
In total, 80,266 women and 36,622 men enrolled in the study recalling their weight at ages 5, 10,20, 30 and 40 years. They also provided body mass index at age 50, and were followed from age 60 over a median of 15-16 years for death. They answered detailed questionnaires on lifestyle and medical information every two years, and on diet every four years. Among the cohort fine distinct body shapes were identified from age 5-50: lean-stable, lean-moderate increase, lean-marked increased, medium-stable/increase, and heavy-stable/increase.
The results showed that people who remained stably lean throughout life had the lowest mortality, with a 15-year risk of death being 11.8% in women, and 20.3% in men. Those who reported being heavy as children and who remained heavy, or gained further weight, especially during middle age, had the highest mortality, with a 15-year risk of death being 19.7% in women and 24.1% in men.
“Our findings provide further scientific rationale for recommendations of weight management, especially avoidance of weight gain in midlife, for long term health benefit,” the author concluded.
In a second study, an international team of researchers found that increasing levels of BMI are associated with higher risk of premature death. It was expected that a higher BMI is associated with a reduced life expectancy, but the previous largest study showed that when compared to normal weight, overweight was associated with reduced mortality and only high levels obesity were associated with increased mortality.
The various limitations in the study such as smoking and prevalent or pre-diagnostic illness were not taken into account, both of which could lead to lower body weight, and increased mortality.
So, researchers in the current study sought to clarify this association by carrying out a large meta-analysis of 230 prospective studies with more than 3.74 million deaths among more than 30.3 million participants.
They analysed people who never smoked to rule out the effects of smoking, and the lowest mortality was observed in the BMI range 23-24 among this group. Lowest mortality was found in the BMI range 22-23 among healthy never smokers, excluding people with prevalent diseases. Among people who never smoked and studied over a longer duration of follow up of more than 20 and 25 years, where the influence of pre-diagnostic weight loss would be less, the lowest mortality was observed in the BMI range 20-22.
The findings of the study demonstrate the importance of smoking and health conditions in the association between BMI and mortality and reinforces concerns about the adverse effects of excess weight. There is an emphasis on the need to maintain a healthy weight although also a recognition that there are major challenges in finding effective ways to prevent weight gain, support weight loss and prevent further weight regain in both individuals and populations.