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The "obesity epidemic" may be old news. But it's one of our most pressing new health challenges.

Despite the fabulous abs and flat stomachs tormenting us from hundreds of magazine covers every year, the details are sobering:

• More than half of us are OVERWEIGHT
• An alarming number of us are OBESE
• More than 300,000 DEATHS each year are connected with weight-related illnesses (about 1,200 deaths a day)
• Weight-related illnesses may soon rival CIGARETTE SMOKING in causing preventable disease and death

"Domino Effect"
Worse yet, one disease leads to another. Obesity has an insidious link to cardiovascular disease – the number-one killer of Americans – and type 2 diabetes. In fact, cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the primary cause of diabetes-related death. Other factors – such as lack of exercise, smoking, poor diet and genetics – play a role, of course. Nevertheless, one recent study put it in simple terms: Obese people with type 2 diabetes have close to a 100 percent chance of developing cardiovascular disease.
The study, called the Framingham Heart Study, followed almost 5,000 participants for 35 years. The male and female participants – none of whom had suffered a heart attack by age 50 – were tracked until they had a heart attack or a stroke, or reached age 85.
The Framingham researchers reported their findings at the American Heart Association's 2001 Scientific Sessions, which attract the nation's leading researchers in cardiovascular disease. The findings clearly indicate that the lifetime risk of suffering from cardiovascular disease is directly related to obesity levels in women with type 2 diabetes (their risk was proportional to their body weight).
Furthermore, obese women with type 2 diabetes were almost guaranteed to develop CVD, according to the researchers, with a whopping 99 percent of lifetime risk. For obese men with type 2 diabetes, the lifetime risk for CVD was shown to be 100 percent, and unrelated to degree of body weight.
Clearly, it's time to wake up to the dangers of obesity – and start developing dietary and lifestyle strategies to prevent it.
Bigger Than All of Us Because this profound increase in weight is so widespread – 60 percent of adults and 13 percent of children are overweight in the United States – individuals cannot realistically be expected to deal with it on their own. It is a societal challenge that threatens a deeply detrimental impact on public health. It calls for a national awareness of preventive strategies among health professionals.

Researchers speculate that this profound increase in weight is due to a dangerous "secular trend," a long-term, population-wide change. Statistics from a 15-year study show that the obesity problem is severe and unyielding. This long-term, multi-center study – known as CARDIA (Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults) – tracked the weight of over 5,000 young people from 1985 to 2000. It examined changes in cardiovascular risk factors in the participants, who were 18 to 30 years old at the outset of the study. When the study concluded, the participants were either overweight or obese. The number of people with a normal, healthy weight had decreased markedly. The message was clear: Obesity is a widespread national problem.

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