It's OK to deliberately lose weight when you're older

Wednesday, 07 April 2010

New American research has now found that intentional weight loss in not at all harmful to older adults.

The results of the study are due to be published in the Journal of Gerontology: Medical Sciences.

M. Kyla Shea, a research associate in the Department of Internal Medicine, is the first author on the study. According to her findings, overweight older people who switch to healthier and less calorie-dense diets, and who use exercise programmes, are half as likely as those who do not do anything to achieve weight loss to die within eight years of follow-up.

The researcher said: "It was an unusually strong and surprising finding. Our data suggest that people should not be concerned about trying or recommending weight loss to address obesity-related health problems in older adults."

Previous research on weight loss and mortality in older people had not considered other potential causes of death. This time Shea and colleagues used a more rigorous, randomised trial approach. They again looked at data drawn from older sufferers of knee arthritis involved in a trial on weight loss and physical function in the 1990s. It seemed that eight years after the trial there were far fewer deaths in those who had actively lost weight than in the participants who had not done so.

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