If you’ve gained weight (especially about the middle) after the age of 50 you have a significantly increased type 2 diabetes risk according to new research appearing in the Journal of the American Medical Association. A weight gain of as little as 20 pounds tripled the risk of diabetes in study subjects. This echoes the warning of the American Diabetes Association (ADA) – being overweight at any age is a risk factor for developing type 2 diabetes.
Estimates from the ADA suggest almost 24 million American adults and children are living with some form of diabetes. That’s 7.8% of the population of the United States. Each year 1.6 million more people are diagnosed. Most cases of diabetes are type 2.
What hasn’t gotten a lot of attention according to study author Mary L. Biggs, a research scientist out of the University of Washington, is how the composition of the body, and changing weight over time, might affect the risk of diabetes in the older adult.
The researchers used data that came from the Cardiovascular Health Study, a project that lasted from 1989-2007, and included information on 4,200 subjects over the age of 65.
At the start of the research not one of the participants had been diagnosed with diabetes. The data, collected over an average of a dozen years, included body mass index, waist circumference, waist-to-hip ratio, as well as other measures.
The team saw that those with the highest baseline numbers for weight had a 4.3 times higher risk of diabetes than those who had the lowest measurements.
There were some measures that stood out as being very predictive. Men over 65 with a BMI over 38.7 (overweight) had a 5.6 times higher risk of diabetes than the male with a BMI under 23.3. The risk of diabetes was 3.7 times higher for women with similar BMI numbers..
Having fat about the middle, the so-called visceral fat, is more closely rated to insulin resistance, and this could be a factor in the increased risk in men.
Continues below…
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Weight Gain Later In Life Ups Risk Of Diabetes… Continued…
In the males, those whose waists measured above 104.6 centimeters had 5.1 times the risk of diabetes, when compared to subjects with a waist circumference under 89.1 centimeters. In women, the risk was 3.6 times higher with a waist circumference of 101.1 centimeters, compared to those with measurements of 78.6 centimeters.
Adding weight later in life was also shown to have a big impact on the risk of diabetes. Those who were normal weight at 50 and then added 13-20 pounds increased diabetes risk at age 65 (or older) by 1.3 times. If the weight gained was over the twenty pound mark, the risk increased by 3.2 times.
The impact was even more pronounced if you were overweight or obese at 50 and gained even more weight. The more weight, the more risk.
Study lead Biggs sees the findings as an important public health wake up call, especially considering the risk of type 2 diabetes, and the rates of mortality because of heart disease (that can be related to diabetes) in those of increasing years.
Finding a link between diabetes risk and weight makes it even more important to get the message out that keeping your weight in the healthy range all through life – especially as you age – is a key component to staying healthy, active and mentally sharp.
