Apples for Health- Severe obesity as bad as smoking

Severe obesity as bad as smoking

OXFORD, England, March 18 (UPI) -- Severe obesity can shorten a life by up to 10 years -- comparable with the effects of lifelong smoking, British researchers said.

A review of nearly 60 long-term studies involving almost 1 million people worldwide, led by researchers at the Clinical Trial Service Unit at Oxford University, found moderate obesity shortens life expectancy by up to 4 years.

Researchers brought together the results of 57 prospective studies that tracked about 895,000 people, most in Europe and North America, over an average of 10 to 15 years.

During that time about 100,000 of them died, making this the largest investigation of how obesity affects mortality, Medical News Today reported.

The researchers used body mass index to assess obesity. Moderate obesity is having a BMI of 30 to 35, and severe obesity is having a BMI of 40 to 50. The results showed that rates of death were lowest among men and women whose BMI was 23 to 24 -- or a person who is 5-foot-7 and weighs about 154 pounds.

"Continuing to smoke is as dangerous as doubling your body weight, and three times as dangerous as moderate obesity," Richard Peto of Oxford University said in a statement.

"Changing your diet but keeping on smoking is not the way to increase lifespan."

The findings are published in The Lancet.