If, like most people, you’re carrying a few extra pounds (or you did when you were younger), this added weight increases your risk for physical disabilities in your golden years.
This comes as the result of new research at Sticht Center on Aging at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. Recognizing that the elderly population in the United States is getting growing all the time (expected to double by 2030 to about 20% of the adult population), problems with mobility may well be a major concern for all of us.
The study, funded by the National Institute on Aging and the Wake Forest University Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center, appears in the April 15, 2009 issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology.
The research uses data collected in the Health, Aging and Body Composition study and the subjects were a group of Medicare recipients in Pennsylvania and Tennessee recruited between April 1997 and June 1998.
To participate in the study the subjects had to be functioning well, living in the community and healthy – free of life threatening illness. There were a total of 2,845 participants, of an average age of 74 years old.
“In both men and women, being overweight or obese put them at greater risk of developing mobility limitations in old age, and the longer they had been overweight or obese, the greater the risk,” explains lead investigator Denise Houston.
Houston is a recognized expert on aging and nutrition, as well as assistant professor of gerontology at Wake Forest University School of Medicine.
For purposes of this research, mobility was defined as an inability to walk a quarter mile, or climb ten steps.
None of the subjects had any of these problems at the start of the study. Any new mobility limitations were reported during twice yearly follow up for the 7 years of the study.
Using subjects body mass index (BMI) at different age intervals, the researchers found that a woman who was overweight from her mid-20s to her 70s was almost three times more likely to have mobility limitations than women who maintained a more healthy weight.
Men’s risk was just a bit less – about 1.6 times more likely to develop mobility troubles, according to the study.
What’s more, the work found that women who were obese (BMI of 30) at age 50, but had reduced their BMI by the they reached their 70s, were 2.7 times more likely to have mobility issues compared to women who were not obese at any time.
For men under the same circumstances, the risk was 1.8 times greater for mobility limitations than men who’d never been obese.
Your doctor will tell you that added weight puts extra strain on your joints, can keep you from exercising and be a factor that contributes to chronic conditions – things like heart disease, arthritis or diabetes. These three have been directly linked with limitations in mobility.
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Extra Pounds Earlier In Life Linked With Later Mobility Troubles continued…
If you’re thinking you have plenty of time to drop the extra weight… the research found that this may not be the case.
Often weight loss later in life is involuntary, usually the result of some underlying medical condition, after years of extra weight have done their worst to your joints, and lack of exercise has your body weak and wobbly.
To give yourself the best chance of mobility in your later years, your best bet is to get the weight off now, and get active so that you gradually work to build up your joints, muscle strength and overall health.
To your good health,
Kirsten Whittaker
Daily Health Bulletin Editor
