Obesity and Smoking: Dramatic tolls on health Food Consumer

Obesity and Smoking: Dramatic tolls on health Food Consumer


By Sheilah Downey

If statistics are to be believed, Americans as a whole are not a healthy bunch.

Recent estimates from the American Heart Association show that approximately 47.1 million people still smoke cigarettes and about 60 million people are obese.

And while the numbers of nonsmokers are increasing yearly, so are the waistlines of more and more Americans.

In fact, if obesity rates continue to escalate as they have been, they could erase the health benefits achieved nationally by declining smoking rates, says the study by Harvard and the University of Michigan.

"In the past 15 years, smoking rates have declined by 20 percent, but obesity rates have increased by 48 percent," said lead author Dr. Susan T. Stewart, a Harvard research associate. "If past trends continue, nearly half of the population -- 45 percent -- is projected to be obese by 2020."

So unless rates of both smoking and obesity decrease, the life expectancy of Americans will be reduced by nine months, according to the study in the Dec. 3 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Using analysis that forecasts trends based on historical data, researchers predicted that despite declines in smoking, the life expectancy of a typical 18-year-old would decrease by 0.71 years by 2020 because of the increased Body Mass Index (BMI) of the general population.

On the silver-lining side of the picture, researchers found that if all adults stopped smoking and reached normal weight by 2020, their life expectancy would increase by about 4 years.

"Obesity plays a large role in life expectancy," said co-author Allison B. Rosen, assistant professor in the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Michigan. "Despite the fact that we are smoking less, body mass indexes are going up. Those increases in obesity are overtaking these changes in smoking behaviors."

Researchers pointed out that results of the study do not necessarily imply a drop in life expectancy, but rather that it would not rise as quickly as it otherwise would without these risk factors.

Although studies in the past have linked quitting smoking with weight gain, researchers said this study does not indicate that is a factor. Weight gain associated with quitting smoking is usually temporary and not considered a significant trend in increased BMIs.

It is the roots of obesity that need to change, said study authors, including sedentary lifestyles and the fast-food, super-size portions that are dominating many American diets.

Public health efforts aimed at smokers have worked and similar efforts could help forestall the obesity rates, said Dr. Rosen.

"Losing weight is harder than quitting smoking," she said. "People don't have to smoke to live. People have to eat to live."

Rosen said the ideal world where no one smokes and everyone is of normal weight may not be achievable, but should be studied.

"These results show the dramatic toll that both smoking and obesity can have on both the length of life and the quality of life," she said.

The study was funded by the National Institute on Aging, the National Bureau of Economic Research, the Harvard Interfaculty Program for Health Systems Improvement and the Lasker Foundation.