209lbs Tuesday

Today the scales said 209lbs. Getting closer to below the 200 mark! Lost 25lbs now.

I saw an article on Television the other day that talked about the risk factors of being overweight.

Here is an article I found on the story from TV's Global Network: www.globalnational.com

The more obese, the bigger the health risk

Wednesday, July 05, 2006

TORONTO -- While obesity is generally viewed as a singular health concern, a new study of over 90,000 women suggests that health risks increase substantially with increased weight, including high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol -- even death.
The study was published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), and has an important suggestion for women looking into ways of confronting their obesity problems

"When a woman and her physician are choosing treatment options for obesity, they should carefully consider the degree of obesity, not just think of obesity as an overall entity," writes Dr. Kathleen McTigue, the study's lead author. "The degree of obesity will influence how likely it is that her health will be harmed by her current weight."

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh, along with researchers from six other institutes, looked at data from 90,185 women from 40 centres in the United States and followed up for an average of seven years.

The researchers assigned the women into five weight categories according to their weight-to-height ratio (also known as body mass index or BMI), and focused on their rates of death and newly diagnosed conditions of heart disease.

The categories were normal (BMI 18.5 – 24.9), overweight (BMI 25.0 – 29.9), obesity 1 (BMI 30.0 – 34.9), obesity 2 (BMI 35.0 – 39.9) and extreme obesity (BMI = 40).

Researchers found that women in the third category, 'obesity 1,' had a 12 per cent higher risk of death after seven years, and that women in the fifth category, 'extreme obesity,' had an alarming 86 per cent higher risk of death than women in the 'normal' category.

The researchers concluded that death rates increased substantially with increasing weight category, ranging from 68.39 deaths per 10,000 person-years in women with normal BMIs to 116.85 deaths per 10,000 person-years in extremely obese women.

"These findings also underscore the importance of learning more about the best treatments for extremely obese women, as well as the need for aggressive diagnosis and treatment of diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol in the obese,” writes Dr. McTigue.McTigue also warns that current data suggests the problem of obesity is worsening among adults rather than improving, with obesity rates among U.S. adults skyrocketing to 30 per cent of adults 20 years of age or older (over 60 million in the U.S. alone) in just two decades. Among young people, the number categorized as overweight or obese has more than tripled over the past 25 years.
The study also found that the prevalence of extreme obesity varied with race and ethnicity from 1 percent among Asian and Pacific Islanders to 10 percent among black women.

"Calculating the weight-related risks of morbidity and mortality based on our findings in earlier population samples, which tended to reflect lower degrees of obesity, may underestimate the risks for diverse groups," according to the study.

"More accurately assessing weight-related health risk may both improve policy decisions about obesity and assist women in making informed decisions about their health."

Researchers also found weight-related risk for all-cause mortality, coronary heart disease mortality, and coronary heart disease incidence did not differ by race or ethnicity. Until now it has been unclear whether health risks increase or plateau as body weight increases through the levels of obesity.

© Global National 2006