From Reuters:

An increasingly aging U.S. population is faced with growing obesity-related problems ranging from disabilities to chronic kidney disease, researchers said on Tuesday.

“Obesity is more hazardous to the health of the elderly than we previously suspected,” said Dawn Alley of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, whose study appears in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

… “We believe that two factors are likely contributing to the rise in disability among older, obese people,” said Dr. Virginia Chang, who also worked on the study.

“First, people are potentially living longer with their obesity due to improved medical care, and second, people are becoming obese at younger ages than in the past. In both instances, people are living with obesity for longer periods of time, which increases the potential for disability,” she said.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 7th, 2007 at 5:46 am and is filed under disabilities, elderly, medicine, research news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.  Email This Post