Obesity Rates Disturbingly High
New research by Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina shows frightening levels of obesity in the United States.
Dr. Gregory L. Burke, the principal investigator at Wake Forest University, says “the obesity epidemic has the potential to reduce further gains in life expectancy, largely through an effect on cardiovascular disease mortality.”
Of over 6,800 middle-age or older adults who participated in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis, researchers found that more than two thirds of white, African American and Hispanic participants were overweight and one third to one half were obese. Chinese Americans had much lower obesity rates with 33% being overweight and only 5% obese.
The researchers found that obese adults, when compared to normal-weight adults, had higher rates of high blood pressure (up to over twice as high), abnormal lipids (two to three times higher), and diabetes, despite a large percentage being on medications to lower blood pressure and lipid levels and to control diabetes.
While these results are very troubling, I think that this problem will continue to increase. The lifestyle of most Americans just lends itself to obesity. As for the medications, I’m not really surprised. It seems that the drug companies have been more focused on treating symptoms and not causes for some time now. Maybe it’s better for business that way.
Reference: MedLine Plus
Sphere: Related Content478 views
Related posts:
- Heart Disease Begins At Childhood
- Carbohydrates and Obesity May Be Linked to Esophageal Cancer
- All U.S. Adults Could Be Overweight In 40 Years
Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically each day to your feed reader.
Trackbacks & Pingbacks
[...] levels in America, especially with children, should be a major concern. I just posted about how obesity levels are alarmingly high, and now it is shown that heart disease may originate in [...]
[...] Tech Obesity Rates Disturbingly High » This Summary is from an article posted at strongbodies on Thursday, May 15, 2008 New research [...]
Comments
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
Yes, rather than taking medicine to lose weight, or help with problems caused by obesity, people need to just change their lifestyles. I know it’s a lot harder than it sounds, though.
Lindsay’s last blog post..An almost perfect mutt
Although I am not in the favor to use medicine to reduce the weight but I have seen a lot of changes. Mode of actions have been changed, Now we have medicine which don’t allow fats to be part of body and medicine expels all fats without digestion.
Diabetes Blog’s last blog post..Diabetes: Importance of Diet and Change in Lifestyle