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How Would Smoking and Obesity Affect Life Expectancy? Studies have shown that obesity can contribute to a number of significant health problems including diabetes, heart disease, hypertension (high blood pressure), stroke and various sleep disorders. Smoking, on the other hand, is known to be the prime risk factor for cancer and heart disease. In a 50-year study, British researchers reported that a life of cigarette smoking would be 10 years, on average, shorter than a life without it. They also indicated that almost half of the cigarette smokers among about 35,000 British doctors studied were killed and a quarter died before 70 years old. The findings were published on June 22, 2004 in the British Medical Journal. In addition, the study also found that stop smoking could have profound effect on the life span. For example, a person who quits smoking by the age of 30 could have the same average life span as a nonsmoker, and smoker who quits smoking at the age of 50 would cut the life expectancy by 4 years instead of 10 years. If smoking could cut one’s life span, how about obesity? According to a research published on March 28, 2009 in the journal The Lancet, obesity could reduce life expectancy by 2 to 4 years while being very obese could cut by 8 to 10 years. Researchers from the University of Oxford and the Prospective Studies Collaboration analyzed 57 studies including almost 894,576 people, mostly from North America and Western Europe.
For the past 30 years or so in the United States, the reduction in the number of smokers has shown some improvements in health but the increase in obesity has seriously deteriorated the health of Americans. In other words, the number of persons dying from smoking is decreasing while those dying of obesity is increasing. In order to facilitate more efficient employment of health care resources, it is necessary to have a better understanding of the joint effects of the two conflicting trends on life expectancy and quality of life. With this objective in their minds, researchers from the National Bureau of Economic Research carried out a study using data on smoking trends and body mass index (BMI) obtained from the National Health Interview Survey and the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey respectively. The classification of BMI levels was based on the guidelines from the World Health Organization (WHO). In their paper published on December 3, 2009 in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), the researchers pointed out that a person aged 18 years old would yield an increase of 0.31 year of life span by 2020 as a result of reduction of smoking. Nevertheless, the increasing rate of obesity during the same life span of time would cut the life span by 1.02 years. Meanwhile, there will be a reduction of 1.32 years of quality-adjusted expectancy of life. Quality-adjusted expectancy of life is a measure to consider the levels of disability and additional factors that affect the quality of life. The study also showed that if all the American adults were of normal weight and did not smoke, the expected life span would increase by 3.76 years or 5.16 quality-adjusted years. As indicated in the paper, the number of smokers has declined by 20 percent in the United States during the last 15 years while there was a 48 percent increase in the number of obese people during the same period of time. The report also forecasted that number of smokers would be decreased by 21 percent while the number of obese would be increased by 45 percent by 2020. The researchers, as what other health experts have been suggesting, indicated that it is necessary to have a determined public health campaign similar to those that have been employed in anti-smoking to turn around the obesity trend. People should also need to focus on certain social issues such as sedentary lifestyles, availability of high-calorie food, and a shortage of time in preparing home-made food to fight the sources of obesity.
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