A Young Person’s View: Do I Still Have Many Years Before I Need to Live Healthily?

Aging healthily is perhaps one of our greatest wishes. Yet most serious diseases, such as cardiovascular disease, hypertension, diabetes, and cancer, occur at age 50 and later. Unfortunately, we generally recognize this only after a certain age and then begin trying to avoid illness. The strength and confidence of youth and middle age often lead us to say, “I still have many years before I need to start living healthily or give up bad habits.” However, many studies published in recent years indicate that healthy lifestyle habits should begin in childhood.

A new article supporting this view was recently published in the prestigious American medical journal JAMA. The study suggests that excess weight gained during young adulthood , a period when many of us neglect our health, effectively lays the groundwork for many chronic diseases that develop later in life.

In the American study, the weights of more than 120 thousand participants, initially recorded at age 18 for women and 21 for men, were tracked up to approximately age 55. From age 55 onward, participants were followed until they developed cardiovascular disease, cancer, another chronic disease, or died. This important study lasted approximately 37 years .

The study examined the relationship between weight changes beginning early in life and continuing through middle adulthood and 11 chronic diseases developing later. It found that during young and middle adulthood, even modest to moderate weight gain increased the risk, after age 55 in both sexes, of hypertension, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity-related cancer , and death.

Compared with people whose weight remained stable, defined as gaining no more than 2.5 kg or gaining no weight, those with a modest weight gain of 2.5-10 kg had:

• Approximately 2 times the risk of diabetes.
• Approximately 1.3 times the risk of hypertension and cardiovascular disease.
• Approximately 1.2 times the risk of obesity-related cancers.
• Higher risks of gallstones and severe osteoarthritis, a bone disease, especially among women.
• Conversely, their chances of healthy aging were found to decrease.
• Each additional 5 kg of weight gain was also associated with a further increase in disease risks.

This study should be interpreted as showing that weight gained during youth, when we consider ourselves healthiest, can adversely affect future health and contribute to unhealthy aging. Young adulthood has also been neglected as a period in which obesity develops. Preventing and controlling obesity in young adults should therefore be a priority.

As we at OncoTrust always emphasize, the best way to lead a healthy life is to acquire healthy lifestyle habits at a young age and, whenever possible, put them into practice together as a whole family.