Not Smoking But Still Dying —

Americans have swapped one vice for another, and it could be taking months, if not years, off our lives. New research suggests that although the number of smokers in the United States has decreased by 20% in the past 15 years, the number of obese Americans has increased by 48%. If the trends continue, the dangers of obesity will overshadow the public health gains from reduced smoking over the next decade.

The study draws upon data from national health surveys conducted over the past few decades, some stretching back to 1971, which covered a few hundred thousand people. The authors calculated how smoking and obesity affected life span between 1990 and 2005 (the most recent year for which data were available) and extrapolated those rates forward until 2020. According to this analysis, obesity will rob a typical 18-year-old in 2020 of 0.71 years (260 days) of life and 0.91 years (332 days) of quality of life.

More specifically, the average life span gain from not smoking, 0.31 years, was one-third of the average harm done by adding weight, 1.02 years. The paper also reports that, in the highly unlikely event that all Americans quit smoking and reach a normal weight by 2020, the average life span would increase by 3.76 years and 5.16 quality-adjusted years.

Full Story Not Smoking But Still Dying — Kean 2009 (1202): 2 — ScienceNOW.