Obesity May Shorten Americans' Life Expectancy I
[author:Margaret Public time:Mar 18, 2006] |
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America's obesity epidemic could abruptly end the pattern of steady gains in life expectancy seen in modern times, scientists warn in a new report.
Life expectancy at birth is already one-third to three-quarters of a year shorter than it would be if people were to maintain their ideal body weight, the analysis finds. Unless drastic measures are taken to reverse obesity's prevalence, researchers say the life span of the average American could be reduced by two to five years in the coming decades.
"This is not based on speculation about some impending disaster or unforeseen event," said study author S. Jay Olshansky, a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of Illinois at Chicago. "It is based on the future of American health that we can observe today among the very people who will express the health and life expectancy of the future: today's children."
His team's study, funded in part by the National Institute on Aging (NIA), appears in the March 17 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
Because of obesity's toll on human health, researchers also said the number of Americans who will live long enough to cash in on age-entitlement programs in the United States is overstated.
"This is not the way we want to save Social Security and Medicare," added Olshansky, whose collaborators included noted longevity researchers Leonard Hayflick of the University of California, San Francisco, and Dr. Robert N. Butler of the International Longevity Center in New York.
Their sobering outlook stands in sharp contrast to a rosier forecast issued last November by a consortium of 12 federal agencies, including the NIA. In that analysis, researchers predicted a continuation of the historic trend of increasing life expectancy.
Source: http://www.msn.com/
Printed From:http://www.free-press-release.com/news/200603/1142683019.html
Source:Free Press Release
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