WASHINGTON — If Americans would just do more exercise, they wouldn't have to worry so much about how much weight they carry, a leading researcher says.
Being unfit and being fat bring independent risks of dying early, so a fat person can reduce some of the risk simply by exercising regularly, said Steven N. Blair of The Cooper Institute for Aerobics Research in Dallas. In this scenario, weight loss could be considered a separate benefit.
"As a public health problem, data from this report indicate that low fitness is perhaps the most important for obese individuals," Blair said. "The low-fit men were just as likely to die as men who'd had a heart attack, a stroke, or some other form of cardiovascular disease," Blair said.
Blair and his colleagues looked at data on 25,174 men who were followed for an average of 10 years. All were given exercise tests to determine their fitness. Thirteen percent were obese, 46% were overweight and 41% were of normal weight. About 50% of the obese men had low fitness.
The findings appear in a recent issue of the Journal of the American Medical Assn.
Obese men with low fitness had 2.3 times the risk of dying compared with obese men who were not unfit. In contrast, obese men who started the study with cardiovascular disease had 2.4 times the risk of dying, compared with similar men who started the study without it.
Obese men who had high cholesterol had a 70% greater risk of dying than did similar men without high cholesterol. Obese men with diabetes or who were current smokers had 50% greater risks, and obese men with high blood pressure had a 10% greater risk.
"Even I, with my biases, was a little surprised to see that low fitness was actually a stronger predictor of mortality than was diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol or current smoking," said Blair, a longtime proponent of the health value of regular physical activity.
And because low fitness is far more common than, for instance, diabetes, physical activity could have an even greater importance in saving lives, Blair said. Up to 44% of deaths among the obese could have been prevented by exercise, compared with 9% of deaths if diabetes had been prevented, he said.
To Blair, America's preoccupation with the mirror and scale is misplaced. "For many of us, no amount of dieting or exercise will make us have the physique of models and movie stars," he said. "It's an unattainable goal."
