OVERWEIGHT WOMEN / HEART DISEASE
Being even slightly overweight for a woman increases her
risk for heart disease. This is Dr.
Steven Andrew Davis, Speaking of Health.
Sometimes medical literature jargon can stand a little translation. Consider this from an article published in
the Journal of AMA. “In a prospective cohort study of
women, higher levels of adiposity…were monotonically related to the
increasing incidences of non fatal myocardial infarction.” Translation:
overweight women have more heart attacks. But the important lesson here is that a woman
doesn’t have to be outright fat to be at increased risk for coronary
heart disease. This Harvard School of
Public Health study followed over 115,000 American women for 14 years, and
looked at the relationship between gaining weight and heart disease. “The lowest risks were amont those
women who were lean at 18 years of age and did not gain or lose appreciable weight
after that time. They also found that
the cumulative lifetime risk of coronary heart disease greatest among those
(women) who are somewhat of a departure from traditional guidelines that assume
it’s all right for women to start gaining a fair amount of weight at age
35. On the contrary, these researchers
say that their data adds to the already voluminous evidence that excess body
fat is a cuase of coronary heart disease, and that it also indicates that even
levels of body weight not generally considered to be overweight can be
associated with important increases in risk for heart disease. Speaking of Health, I’m Dr. Steven
Andrew Davis for CBS News.
E-Mail
drdavis@davishealth.com
Dr. Steve Davis
7810 Louis Pasteur #200
210/614-3355
