Heart Failure Risk Increases With Extra Weight
A U.S. study published on Monday that calculated the heart hazards of being slightly overweight stated that even a little bit of extra weight can raise the risk of heart failure.
Heart failure is a deadly condition in which the heart is unable to pump enough blood throughout the body.
But researchers found that even those who were only modestly overweight had a higher risk of heart failure after tracking the health of 21,094 U.S. male doctors for two decades.
The study in the journal Circulation showed that in men who are 5 feet 10 inches tall, for every seven pounds of excess body weight, their risk of heart failure rose on average by 11 percent over the next 20 years.
The men in the study had an average age of 53 and 1,109 of them developed heart failure.
The risk of heart failure increased by 180 percent in men who met the definition of obesity according to their body mass index (BMI of 30 and higher), and by 49 percent in men who met the definition of overweight (a BMI of 25 to 30).
Doctors say congestive heart failure contributes to 300,000 deaths each year in the United States.
Coronary artery disease and high blood pressure conditions can leave the heart too weak or stiff to fill and pump blood efficiently.
The researchers also looked at how physical activity affected heart failure risk.
“The lean and active group had the lowest risk and the obese and inactive group had the highest risk," said Dr. Satish Kenchaiah of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and colleagues.
"As far as vigorous physical activity is concerned, even if somebody said they exercised one to three times per month — which is a very low level of exercise — they had an 18 percent reduction in the risk of heart failure after accounting for all other established risk factors," Kenchaiah added.
The researchers found the benefit of exercise in cutting heart failure risk was seen in lean, overweight and obese men. But regardless of the level of activity, higher body mass index also meant higher heart failure risk.
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