Girls: lose weight for health

Losing weight before adulthood reduces diabetes risk

A study analysing nearly 110,000 women in the United States, to be published in Diabetes Care, has found that weightloss in childhood can reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes. The study began in 1989, with an initial survey on the women’s health, history and lifestyle. Each woman was asked to pick from a series of diagrams of body shape, asking which of them was the best match for their body at ages 5, 10 and 20, and they were also asked to estimate their weight when they were 18. Every two years, until the survey ended in 2005,  follow-up data was gathered – including whether they had developed diabetes.

The women who had indicated they were overweight at aged 5 were over twice as likely to have developed diabetes than the lower normal-weight women, and those with a BMI over 30 at age 18 were almost nine times as likely to develop diabetes than those with a BMI of 18–19.

In addition, the survey found that women overweight at the three younger ages (5, 10 and 20) were 15 times as likely to develop diabetes. However, those who were overweight at age 10, but who became normal-weight adults, did not have an increased risk, and those who were overweight or obese at age 18 and subsequently lost 10 pounds or more decreased their risk by more than half, when compared with women who maintained that higher weight in adulthood.

Source: NIH news release, 28 May 2010.

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