Obesity, Disability Linked in Elders

Nov. 6, 2007 -- Here's yet another reason to maintain a healthy weight as you age: Obesity and disability are linked. Older adults who are obese develop more disabilities that interfere with daily living than older adults who are normal weight or slightly overweight, according to a new study.

For some types of disabilities, the risk among obese people is twice as great as among normal-weight people.

"It's not just that obese people have a higher risk [of these disabilities] than normal-weight people," says researcher Dawn Alley, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health and Society Scholars Program at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. "What is new about this research is that the risk is actually increasing in obese people over time."

Adults aged 60 and over who are slightly overweight did not have much of an increased risk of impairment, Alley says. But in those who were obese, the risk rose at a rate she considers "concerning." The more obese, the greater the risk, she found.

While previous research has suggested that the effect of obesity on disability remained constant over time, with disability rising in both the obese and the non-obese, the new study, published in the Nov. 7 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association, suggests otherwise.