New research shows “alarming levels” of obesity in most ethnic groups in the United States, principal investigator Dr. Gregory L. Burke, of Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina told Reuters Health. The study also confirms the potentially deadly toll obesity exacts on the heart and blood vessels.
“The obesity epidemic has the potential to reduce further gains in U.S. life expectancy, largely through an effect on cardiovascular disease mortality (death),” Burke and colleagues warn in the latest issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.
Among 6,814 middle-age or older adults participating in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis, or “MESA” study, researchers found that more than two thirds of white, African American and Hispanic participants were overweight and one third to one half were obese.
Obesity rates were far lower in Chinese Americans in the study, with 33 percent overweight and just 5 percent obese, suggesting, Burke said, that high rates of obesity should not considered “inevitable.” Continued…
