Study shows: Ten years of obesity increases the risk of a heart attack or stroke | US News

The results also seemed to show that obesity was not associated with an increased risk of the disease over a short period of time.

Initial research suggests that people under 50 who have been obese for ten years are at higher risk of heart attack or stroke.

Results presented at the Endocrine Society’s Endo 2024 annual meeting in Boston, Massachusetts, suggest that women under 50 who have been obese for ten years have up to a 60% increased risk of developing these diseases.

According to Alexander Turchin, associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston, the increased risk is up to 57 percent for men under 65.

However, this connection is not observed in women over 50 and men over 65, he added.

The results also seemed to show that obese over a short period of time was not associated with an increased risk of heart disease or stroke.

According to Prof. Turchin, this means that “obesity at any given time does not ‘seal’ a person’s fate.”

He added: “If obesity is treated in time, complications can be prevented.”

Prof Turchin said that while it is known that being overweight increases the risk of a number of diseases, including heart disease and type 2 diabetes, studies have not made it clear to what extent the duration of obesity plays a role.

He said the findings were important because they showed that the earlier younger people were treated for obesity, the better their health.

The team examined data from the Nurses’ Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study – both conducted in the United States.

It included 109,259 women and 27,239 men who had an average age of 48.6 years and a body mass index (BMI) of 27 at the start of the study.

The team focused on those who had a BMI of over 25 – at least once in a 10-year period, between 1990 and 1999.

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Their goal was to find out what influence a person’s weight has on their risk of heart attack or stroke over the next 20 years (2000-2020).

During the study period, 6,862 people developed plaque in their arteries, 3,587 developed type 2 diabetes, and 65,101 people reported having smoked in the past.

A follow-up study in 2020 found that there were 12,048 cardiovascular events – such as heart attacks, strokes or related deaths – in both groups.