Overweight adolescents are at greater risk of developing cardiovascular disease. Those with a BMI over 22 are also affected.
17% of French children and adolescents are overweight or obese. A statistic that worries the health authorities. The alarm is all the more justified given that, according to an Israeli study, premature overweight is associated with a high risk of heart disease. It is particularly marked in the case of more rare conditions, specifies the study published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.
This study is based on a solid follow-up: from 1967 to the present day, more than 2 million adolescents have been regularly evaluated by the team of the Sheba Medical Center (Israel). During this period, more than 32,000 deaths were recorded. 3,100 of them were linked to cardiovascular causes. And volunteers who were overweight or obese as a teenager are much more at risk.
A gradual risk
Overweight young people are more prone to coronary heart disease and stroke in adulthood. Several studies have shown it, and this one confirms it. But the observations targeting less frequent pathologies, such as cardiac arrhythmias or arterial disease, are more alarming.
Compared with participants whose weight was normal in adolescence, those who were overweight were four to eight times more likely to develop hypertensive heart disease. Likewise, the likelihood of contracting cardiomyopathy or heart failure is quadrupled or even quintupled compared to people of healthy weight.
In two pathologies, the risk gradually increases with the BMI points. From 22 kg / m2, the probability of developing arterial disease or hypertensive heart disease increases by 9 and 16%.
The question of normal BMI
But this study reveals a more alarming phenomenon: even when the BMI is considered healthy – therefore less than 25 – a risk may exist. Between 22 and 25, adolescents are more exposed to these cardiovascular pathologies.
And this could explain an astonishing phenomenon, according to the main author of this work. “While mortality from coronary heart disease and stroke in adults under 50 has declined over the past 20 years, mortality from other pathologies has increased,” explains Gilad Twig. However, the range of normal BMI is relatively wide: it varies from 18 to 25.
And previous research has shown that a person’s health can change significantly between these two extremes. One of them even suggested that the ideal BMI should be set at 24.
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