14 DAY TRIAL // Researchers in Germany and in the United States now warn that, according to evidence at hand, folks who pack enough body fat to qualify as obese are more likely to be diagnosed with pulmonary disease at some point in their lives.
More so if, body weight aside, they do not take the time to exercise, be it only for a short while, on a regular basis, the specialists go on to explain in a paper in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
Looking to establish how a person's body weight and (lack of) exercise routine influence their risk to develop chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, the specialists behind this investigation looked at the medical records of 113,279 people.
The study debuted back in 1995, EurekAlert informs. At that time, neither of the 113,279 participants, whose age ranged from 50 to 70 years old, was suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, cancer, or heart disease.
However, over the following decade, as many as 3,648 of the individuals that this investigation focused on were diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The condition was found to be more common among those a tad too plump for their own good.
Specifically, men whose waistline exceeded 118 centimeters (46.4 inches) and women who measured over 110 centimeters (43.3 inches) in circumference were found to be 72% more likely to develop said pulmonary disease than individuals of a normal weight.
“We observed a stronger positive relation with abdominal body fat than with total body fat and COPD [chronic obstructive pulmonary disease],” Dr. Gundula Behrens, with the University of Regensburg in Germany says in a statement.
“In particular, overweight as measured by BMI [body mass index] emerged as a significant predictor of increased risk of COPD only among those with a large waist circumference,” the researcher goes on to detail the outcome of this investigation.
What's interesting is that, according to Dr. Gundula Behrens and fellow researchers, evidence indicates that, even if they are a bit too chubby, people who exercise at least 5 times a week are roughly 29% likely to be diagnosed with obstructive pulmonary disease.
This is yet to be confirmed, but specialists suspect that, all things considered, this reduced pulmonary disease risk in the case of obese and overweight individuals who are physically active is due to the fact that exercise reduces inflammation and oxidative stress in tissues and organs.
“Our findings suggest that next to smoking cessation and the prevention of smoking initiation, meeting guidelines for body weight, body shape and physical activity level may represent important individual and public health opportunities to decrease the risk of COPD.”
“Physicians should encourage their patients to adhere to these guidelines as a means of preventing chronic diseases in general and possibly COPD in particular,” the researchers write in their paper in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.