If You’re Over 40, Losing a “Modest” Amount of Weight Can Lower Your Risk of Death by 19%
Dropping just 6.5% of one's body weight also led to a 48% decreased risk of developing chronic diseases, including cancer and stroke.
Losing weight after 40 can often feel like an uphill battle. Gone are the days of lightning-fast metabolisms that burned through hamburgers and margaritas like nothing. Then, for women, there are all the hormonal changes that come with middle age. But new research shows that losing even a “modest” amount of weight after age 40 can have big-time health benefits, even reducing your risk of death by nearly 20 percent.
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Losing weight in middle age could lead to a longer, healthier life.
A new study, published in the journal JAMA Network Open, tracked the health data of 23,000 participants from Finland and the U.K. for 12 to 35 years, which is considered “long enough to see real impacts on heart disease, cancer, and mortality,” according to a corresponding article in Study Finds.
At the beginning of the study, all participants were between the ages of 30 and 50, and they were observed until they were between 66 and 91. They were divided into four groups based on weight changes that occurred in their 40s:
- Those who maintained a healthy weight
- Those who lost weight and went from overweight to healthy
- Those who gained weight
- Those who remained overweight
- A 48% decreased risk of developing chronic diseases, including type 2 diabetes, myocardial infarction, stroke, cancer, asthma, or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
- A 19% lower risk of death
- Lower blood pressure and cholesterol
These positive changes were observed in those who were previously overweight but then dropped to a body mass index (BMI) of less than 25, suggesting that this is the optimal range for health.
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“The benefits of lifestyle-based weight management are widely discussed even though studies have found it surprisingly difficult to demonstrate health benefits beyond the prevention of diabetes,” said first study author Timo Strandberg, MD, PhD, the full professor of geriatric medicine at the University of Helsinki, Finland, and physician-in chief at the Helsinki University Hospital, Department of Medicine, in a press release.
“I hope the findings will inspire people to see that lifestyle changes can lead to major health improvements and a longer life,” he added. “This is particularly important today as more people are overweight than when the collection of our research data began 35 years ago.”
