By Staff Reports
(Hawaii)– From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I’m Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.
Staying at a healthy weight seems to raise the likelihood of a healthier old age. At the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, researcher Eileen Rillamas-Sun saw evidence of this in data on about 36,600 women whose weight status was checked at an average age of 72.
Rillamas-Sun says underweight and obese women were more likely to die before age 85. And overweight and obese women were more likely to have more disease and greater problems in getting around.
“It looks like being able to maintain a healthy body weight improves their likelihood of not only making it to age 85, but getting there without losing the ability to walk, and without major disease.”
The study in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine was supported by the National Institutes of Health.
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HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I’m Ira Dreyfuss.