A recent and rare study tracked thousands of children through adulthood found that the heaviest youngsters were more than twice as likely as the thinnest to die before age 55 from illness or a self-inflicted injury.
Pre-diabetes with youngsters were at almost double the risk of dying before 55, and those with high blood pressure were at some increased risk, also. But obesity was the factor that most closely associated with an early death, researchers said.
This study was published Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine, frm analyzed data gathered from Pima and Tohono O’odham Indians, whose rates of obesity and Type 2 diabetes soared decades before weight problems became widespread among other Americans. It is one of the largest studies to have tracked children for several decades after detailed information on weight and risk factors like high cholesterol were gathered.
Nearly one in three American children is now considered to be either overweight or obese, and this week, the first lady, Michelle Obama, kicked off a campaign intended to end childhood obesity.
The new study analyzed data gathered about 4,857 nondiabetic American Indian children born between 1945 and 1984, when the children were 11 years old on average, and assessed the extent to which body mass index, glucose tolerance, blood pressure and total cholesterol levels predicted premature death.
By 2003, 559 participants had died, including 166 who died of causes other than accidents and homicides, like cardiovascular disease, infections, cancer, diabetes, alcohol poisoning or drug overdose and a large number who died of alcoholic liver disease, which the study’s authors suggested might be exacerbated by diabetes.
Adults who had the highest body mass index scores as children were 2.3 times as likely to have died early as those with the lowest scores, and those with the highest glucose levels were 73 percent as likely to have died prematurely.
“This really points a finger at impaired glucose tolerance, or pre-diabetes, in ways we have not seen before,” said Edward W. Gregg, who is with the diabetes branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and wrote an editorial accompanying the article. “We’ve been aware that pre-diabetes in adults is related to a lot of adverse outcomes, but the relationship in youth has not been as clear. There are not as many long-term studies to document a risk factor like pre-diabetes in youth all the way to adult outcomes.”
The study found that high blood pressure in childhood was only a weak predictor of early death and high cholesterol was not associated with premature death, but experts suggested those factors were easier to control with medication.
And though the American Indian community is not representative of the nation’s population as a whole, Dr. Gregg said its experience was instructive because “they’ve tended to be just a decade or two ahead of the rest of the U.S. population” in obesity.
When My Doctor Explained To Me I Had Diabetes, this is how I heard him...
Your chart and blood test results show some very disturbing and frightening news...
You are morbidly obese; you have high blood pressure; you have type 2 diabetes; you have a chronic kidney disease; you’re ready for a stroke; you’re developing heart disease; and, if you live long enough… you will end up with incurable cancer.
He definitely had my attention. From that point on I knew if I did not listen to every word and do everything I was told to do (from the nurses, doctors, and the American Diabetes Association) I was a goner for sure…as in dead.
However, it took me two years after meeting with the doctor to figure out that the prescribed medicine and recommended diet I had been given was dead wrong. It really was not my fault (I know that sounds like a narcissistic statement); but when I discovered this, within a short time I cured myself.
Please check out: Diabetes 2b Free It seems that most people, me included, leave our health to chance. That is…until we become so scared and finally wake up and take control of our own destiny.
In my case, the doctor said I had full-blown diabetes, he put me in the hospital as a patient, and told me it was time to put my things in order because my life will not be pleasant for the short time I had left on this earth.
That was my wake up call. I had no other options that would keep me alive except to eat right, exercise, and lose weight, if it was't too late.
There is a lot of good and bad information out there, and the way I learned what was real and worked was by verifying what I did with blood tests.
Blood tests don’t lie and between the hospital tests and my daily tests to monitor my blood sugar or glucose count, I was able to stay on the path to wellness.
Sincerely,
Roger
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