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http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/07/health/nutrition/07OBES.html?tntemail0

Being Fatter at 40 Can Shorten Life by 3 Years

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

HILADELPHIA, Jan. 6 — People who are overweight at 40 are likely to die at least three years sooner than those who are slim, meaning that being fat during middle age is just as damaging to life expectancy as smoking, researchers say in a new study.

The study was conducted by Dutch researchers and is being published on Tuesday in The Annals of Internal Medicine.

Nonsmokers who were classified as overweight, but not obese, lost an average of three years off their lives. Obese people died even sooner. Obese female nonsmokers lost an average of 7.1 years, while obese male nonsmokers lost 5.8 years.

Scientists have long known that overweight people have shorter life expectancies, but few large-scale studies have been able to pinpoint how many years they lose.

"This study is saying that if you are overweight by your mid-30's to mid-40's, even if you lose some weight later on, you still carry a higher risk of dying," said Dr. Serge Jabbour, director of the weight-loss clinic at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia. "The message is that you have to work early on your weight. If you wait a long time, the damage may have been done."

For smokers, the results were worse. Obese female smokers died 7.2 years sooner than normal-weight smokers and 13.3 years sooner than trim nonsmoking women. Obese male smokers lived 6.7 years less than trim smokers, and 13.7 years less than trim nonsmokers.

The results were culled from 3,457 volunteers in Framingham, Mass., from 1948 to 1990. The data were analyzed by researchers at Erasmus Medical Center and the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.

Obesity is defined as having a body-mass index of 30 or above; healthy weight is an index of less than 25. The index is a measure of weight relative to height and can be calculated in several ways, including taking a person's weight in pounds, dividing by height in inches squared, then multiplying by 703. (Or go to   www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/bmi/bmi-adult.htm .)

About two-thirds of American adults are overweight or obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Studies have also shown that people are getting fatter at younger ages.

"The smoking epidemic in the Western world is waning; however, a new fear should be the increasing prevalence of overweight and obesity in young adults, which heralds another potentially preventable public health disaster," the researchers said.

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