Overweight / Obesity
Important Facts You Should Know
“Maryland was named the 27th most obese state in America according to the fifth annual F as in Fat: How Obesity Policies Are Failing in America, 2008 report from the Trust for America’s Health (TFAH) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). The State’s adult obesity rate is 25.2 percent, an increase for the third year in a row.”
“Despite the proven benefits of physical activity, more than 50% of U.S. adults do not get enough physical activity to provide health benefits; 25% are not active at all in their leisure time…”
“Adult obesity rates increased in 37 states in the past year,”
“Rates rose for a second consecutive year in 24 states and for a third consecutive year in 19 states. No state saw a decrease…”
“More than 25 percent of adults are obese in 28 states, which is an increase from 19 states last year. More than 20 percent of adults are obese in every state except Colorado. In 1991, no state had an obesity rate above 20 percent. In 1980, the national average of obese adults was 15 percent…”
In 2007, 62.7% of Maryland respondents to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey were overweight or obese.
Source:
The Preamble to Senate Bill 609; By Senator Britt
Data from the Centers for Disease Control shows that from 1995 to 2007, obesity percentages in Maryland increased annually 75% of the time.
Source:
The Preamble to Senate Bill 609; By Senator Britt
The National Governor’s Association’s Report on Healthy Living, states that “One in three Maryland babies born in 2001 will develop diabetes during their lifetime, or a third of today’s first graders will be tomorrow’s diabetes patients.”
Source:
The Preamble to Senate Bill 609; By Senator Britt
The Centers for Disease Control reports that 73.4% of respondents in Maryland did not consume the recommended daily allowance of fruits and vegetables in 2007, as set forth by the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, appointed by the Departments of Health and Human Services and Agriculture.
Source:
The Preamble to Senate Bill 609; By Senator Britt
Based on a study conducted by researchers and economists from Johns Hopkins University and Centers for Disease Control, Maryland’s obesity-attributable medical expenditures were estimated at $1.53 billion in 2004.
Source:
The Preamble to Senate Bill 609; By Senator Britt
Researchers and economists from the Department of International Health and Centers for Disease Control stated in 2008 that if the trends continue, in only 15 years (2023) 80% of all American adults will be overweight or obese.
Source:
The Preamble to Senate Bill 609; By Senator Britt
The Surgeon General has stated that 50% of African American and Hispanic children and 33% of Caucasian children born in the year 2000 will become diabetics if they fail to change their lifestyles.
Source:
The Preamble to Senate Bill 609; By Senator Britt
Approximately 16 million Americans have Type II diabetes and the number has risen by 50% in the past 10 years.
Source:
The Preamble to Senate Bill 609; By Senator Britt
Obesity may contribute to diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, arthritis, birth defects, gall bladder disease, gout, liver disease, low back pain, sleep apnea, stroke, urinary incontinence, surgical complications, and certain forms of cancer.
Source:
The Preamble to Senate Bill 609; By Senator Britt
These trends in obesity already are associated with dramatic increases in conditions such as asthma and Type II diabetes among children.
Source:
The Preamble to Senate Bill 609; By Senator Britt
The cost of obesity in Maryland is estimated to be $2.5 billion per year including both direct costs for health care and indirect costs for lost productivity.
Source:
The Preamble to Senate Bill 609; By Senator Britt
Three out of four high school students in the United States do not eat the recommended 5 or more servings of fruits and vegetables each day.
Source:
The Preamble to Senate Bill 609; By Senator Britt
A little bit of exercise goes a long way
“While the US Government recommends 150 minutes per week of exercise to maintain physical and emotional health, that amount of exercise may not always be attainable to certain populations. According to new research from the Duke University Medical Center, only 60 minutes per week of activity yielded clear benefits in severely obese patients. While this amount of exercise is less than ideal, experts agree that it’s a great place to start for people who are sedentary.
The researchers split over 1,200 severely overweight subjects into two groups. While some subjects did not engage in any activity, a group of participants were assigned to perform 60 minutes per week of low intensity exercise. The latter group saw significant health improvements, quality of life improvements such as reduced shortness of breath, and increased ability to complete basic daily tasks, such as getting up from chairs, using the stairs, and dressing. The researchers suggest that it’s best for severely obese patients to start out modestly with exercise.”
Source:
The Obesity Society’s annual scientific meeting in Phoenix, AZ.
Obese elderly at high risk for chronic pain
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Half of people aged 70 and older suffer from some type of chronic pain, and women and the obese are particularly vulnerable, new research shows.
Chronic pain, defined as pain that persists for three months or longer, is known to be common among older people, Dr. Richard B. Lipton and colleagues from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, New York, note. Obesity is becoming increasingly prevalent among US seniors, they add, so studying the relationship between excess weight and chronic pain among older people — as well as the role of conditions that might influence both pain and obesity, such as mental health problems, should be studied.
To that end, Lipton and his team looked at 840 men and women participating in the Einstein Aging Study, an ongoing investigation of people 70 and older living in the Bronx.
Overall, 52 percent had some type of chronic pain, including 40 percent of men and 59 percent of women. People with chronic pain were at double the risk of having symptoms of depression or anxiety compared to those who were pain-free. Chronic pain was twice as common among obese people as normal-weight individuals, and four times more common among the severely obese.
Obese people were more likely to have pain in virtually every part of the body than were normal-weight people, including the head, neck, or shoulder; back, legs or feet; or abdomen or pelvis.
Even after the researchers accounted for depression, anxiety, high blood pressure, and diabetes, as well as age, gender and education, the relationship between obesity and chronic pain remained strong.
Obesity could contribute to chronic pain by adding stress to the joints, Lipton and his colleagues say. In addition, obesity promotes inflammation, which could be a contributing factor.
More research is needed, they conclude, to understand whether obesity plays a causal role in chronic pain, and if so what mechanisms might be involved.
Source:
Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, January 2009.
Obesity’s Big Impact
The incidence of clinically defined obesity in the U.S. adult population has reached 34%, more than double the incidence in 1980. A person is considered clinically obese when his or her body mass index (BMI) is 30 or higher. The morbidly obese — those whose BMI is 40+ — represent the fastest-growing sector of obesity. Their average yearly health care costs exceed $7,500, nearly twice the average annual cost for adults who are not obese.
McKinsey estimates that the medical costs associated with clinically obese patients represent about 10% of the sum spent on health care premiums. Reducing the incidence of obesity back to 1980’s level would generate $60 billion a year in net savings.
Source:
“Three Imperatives for Improving U.S. Health Care,” The McKinsey Quarterly, December 2008.
Moderate Weight Loss Reduces Risk of Heart Disease
Evidence shows that even a moderate weight reduction in obese people could save them a lifetime of health problems, especially heart disease. An estimated 50 million Americans have the potentially serious metabolic syndrome, a clustering of risk factors that leads to heart disease.
Doctors at the Methodist DeBakey Heart & Vascular Center in Houston have demonstrated a significant motivation to drop even a modest amount of weight. That is good news when America is facing an epidemic of obesity.
“Obesity appears to be the central component of the metabolic syndrome. Our study have shown that weight loss of as little as 6.5 percent in individuals with the disease results in substantial reductions in blood pressure, glucose, triglycerides and total cholesterol, all factors that lead to heart disease,” said Christie Ballantyne, M.D., director of the Center for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention at the Methodist DeBakey Heart & Vascular Center and Baylor College of Medicine. “These impressive results occur early in the weight loss, well before individuals even begin to approach their ideal body weight.”
Every risk factor of the metabolic syndrome can be tied to increased risk for heart disease. However, research shows that all risk factors were reduced by even moderate weight loss, and equivalent benefits from medications may have required three different drugs for blood pressure, lipids and glucose. Continued weight loss shows significant improvements in both blood pressure and triglycerides.
The study demonstrates that weight loss is an effective tool to lessen the cardiovascular risk factors associated with the metabolic syndrome, and therefore should be the first option when treating the disease.
Source:
IHRSA and Star Trac Health Care Report
Obesity Rates in Maryland
Click here for a powerpoint on Obesity Rates in Maryland.
Obesity Can Shorten Lifespan A Whole Decade
The health risks associated obesity are endless, and are well known to most Americans: obesity increases risk of cancer, diabetes and heart disease, among others. Most people have heard that obesity is impacting children in such a way that the youngest generation may be the first not to outlive their parents because of the predominance of obesity. However a new British study published in the journal The Lancet has assembled data that shows a new, not so well known fact: obesity can shorten a human’s lifespan up to a decade or even more.
A group of researchers aimed to find the exact link between BMI and mortality. To do so, they analyzed 57 studies from the past three decades, with a total of nearly 900,000 people as subjects. Amongst these subjects, 66,552 people died of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, renal disease, respiratory conditions or other lifestyle-mediated diseases. The study concluded that having a BMI over 30 (overweight) could take up to 4 years off of the average lifespan, and a BMI of 35 or over (obese) could take up to 10 years off of one’s lifespan.
Source:
Peto R, et al. (2009). Body-mass index and cause-specific mortality in 900,000 adults: collaborative analyses of 57 prospective studies. The Lancet, epub.
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