Obesity Causes Disability Even After Weight Loss
Wed May 1, 2:42 PM ET

By Melissa Schorr

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Adults who are obese are more likely to become disabled later in life--even if they ultimately manage to take off the weight, researchers report.

"People who were obese and lost weight were still at a higher risk of disability than those who were never obese," lead author Dr. Kenneth Ferraro, a professor of sociology at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, told Reuters Health. "It seems once the body gets across a threshold of weight, it may have long-term consequences."

While obesity is known to be associated with health ailments--from heart disease to diabetes, the researchers were interested in examining whether being obese also carries an independent risk of causing a loss of functioning on everyday tasks.

Ferraro and colleagues examined whether those who were obese suffered any form of disability, defined as a restriction or inability to do simple things such as walk a quarter of a mile, get in and out of a car, or do light chores. They report their findings in the May issue of the American Journal of Public Health, journal of the American Public Health Association (news - web sites).

The investigators used data from two long-term national health surveys, following nearly 7,000 adults for two decades and tracking their body mass index, a measurement based on a person's height and weight.

Ferraro's team found that those who were obese had twice the risk of suffering a lower-body disability later in life, as well as an elevated risk of an upper-body disability. This elevated risk persisted, although to a lower degree, even if the individual managed to lose weight over the course of the study period.

The researchers took into account other potential causes of disability, such as having suffered a stroke or a heart attack, but still found that body weight alone was associated with the increased impairments.

Ferraro said it was still unclear whether an increase in body weight led to these physical impairments as a result of stress placed on the skeletal muscles, a change in metabolism in the body's connective tissues, or unknown other reasons.

However, these findings suggest that passing this threshold of obesity sets off changes in the body that could be hard to change. "One message is the effects (of obesity) are not totally reversible," Ferraro said. "However, there is some hope for an obese person--if they lose weight, they will see an increase in their functioning."

SOURCE: American Journal of Public Health 2002;92.


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