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Obesity and mortality

Authoring team

  • body masses greater than 27 are associated with marked increases in mortality rates
    • if an individual has a body mass less than 27 then there is very little relation between body weight and mortality
    • weight gains of more than 10 kg over time are associated with increased mortality
  • in 2000 in the USA, 15% of deaths were attributable to excess weight, owing to poor diet and physical inactivity (2)

NICE have suggested a schemata for assessing risk associated with obesity (3):

 

Table from Public Health England showing health risk categories based on BMI and waist circumference for the Health Survey for England/NICE, with specific risk levels like low, high, and very high detailed for underweight, healthy weight, overweight, and obese categories.

Based on the NICE schemata this graph reveals the temporal trend in England (3):


Bar chart showing the trend in prevalence of health risk categories based on BMI and waist circumference from the Health Survey for England 1998-2019, highlighting increases in 'Very high risk' and 'High risk' categories over time.

Reference:

  1. Chen C, Ye Y, Zhang Y, et al. Weight change across adulthood in relation to all cause and cause specific mortality: prospective cohort study. BMJ. 2019 Oct 16;367:l5584.
  2. Mokdad AH, Marks JS, Stroup DF, Gerberding JL. Actual causes of death in the United States, 2000. JAMA J Am Med Assoc. 2004 Mar. 10;291(10):1238-45
  3. Public Health England (January 2021). Patterns and trends in adult excess weight.

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