Experts weigh in on what’s fueling the crisis

By Mansur Shaheen-Stayhealthyweekly.org

Published |Updated

The number of Americans suffering heart disease deaths as a result of obesity has tripled since the turn of the century, a study finds.

An international research team, which included representatives from Indiana University and Hofstra University in New York, along with UK scientists, found that America’s obesity crisis is costing lives.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that 40% of Americans are obese and more than 70% are overweight — figures that have sharply risen in recent decades. Experts say that sedentary lifestyles, combined with poor dietary habits and, in some cases, a lack of access to healthy food have fueled this crisis.

Researchers warn that this trend is cropping up around the world, with many countries now suffering an obesity epidemic — making the population more vulnerable to other deadly diseases.

“The number of people with obesity is rising in every country across the world. Our study is the first to demonstrate that this increasing burden of obesity is translating into rising heart disease deaths,” Zahra Raisi-Estabragh, M.D., a researcher from the William Harvey Research Institute in London, said in a statement.

For their study, published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Heart Association, researchers gathered data from nearly 300,000 heart disease deaths among people with obesity in the U.S. between 1999 and 2000.

When adjusting by age, a scale which weighs a person’s death higher if they were younger, they found that the number of people who died from heart disease while obese tripled, from 2.2 per 100,000 members up to 6.6.

Black Americans experienced the largest increase, with deaths in the group jumping 415% over the 21-year period.

“This rising trend of obesity is affecting some populations more than others, particularly Black women,” Dr. Raisi-Estabragh continued.

She also noted that black people in urban areas suffer the most significant disparities compared to their urban peers of other races. Black women had the highest rate of obesity-related deaths over the study period.

“The trend of higher obesity-related cardiovascular death rates for Black women than men was striking and different from all other racial groups considered in our study,” Mamas Mamas, M.D., senior author and cardiologist from the UK, said in a statement.

Heart disease is the leading killer of Americans, and even maintained the dubious title through the COVID-19 pandemic. The CDC estimates that 700,000 Americans die from the disease each year, around 20% of all U.S. deaths. Subscribe Today for a healthier tomorrow!!