Health risk of putting on just 11lb as a young adult

PUTTING on less than a stone across your 20s, 30s and 40s significantly increases the risk of serious health problems in later life, a study has found.

Every 11lb (5kg) that people gain between the age of 18 and 55 reduces the chance of being disease-free by 17 per cent, experts at Harvard University calculated.

The study, which tracked nearly 120,000 people in the US for 37 years, suggests putting on modest weight has a major impact on our health.

Yet the vast majority of people gain far more than this in their early adulthood, the researchers found. Women gained an average of 22lb between the ages of 18 and 55, and men about 19lb. Yet for every 11lb they put on, the risk of developing type 2 diabetes increased by 30 per cent, the chance of developing high blood pressure rose by 14 per cent, the cardiovascular disease risk went up by 8 per cent and the risk of obesity-related cancer increased by 6 per cent. Even the chance of an early death went up, by 5 per cent.

The researchers, at Harvard School of Public Health, calculated that the chance of ‘healthy ageing’ – which they defined as being free of 11 chronic diseases and major cognitive or physical disability – fell by 17 per cent for every 11lb gained.

Senior researcher Professor Frank Hu said: ‘Our study is the first of its kind to systematically examine the association of weight gain from early to middle adulthood with major health risks later in life.

‘The findings indicate that even a modest amount of weight gain may have important health consequences.’

The researchers whose work is published in the JAMA medical journal, found most people gain weight cumulatively during young and middle adulthood. Often it goes unnoticed because the amount of weight gain each year is relatively small. In the UK 67 per cent of adult men and 57 per cent of adult women are overweight – and experts increasingly fear the population is storing up a timebomb of cancer, diabetes and heart disease which will place a huge burden on the NHS in years to come. ÷Women who begin the menopause early are at greater risk of developing type two diabetes, research suggests.

Those who start the menopause before the age of 40 are 3.7 times more likely to develop the condition than women who go through the change after the age of 55, say scientists led by Erasmus University Medical Centre in Rotterdam.