It is pretty obvious that overweight and obese people are more unhealthy have a worse quality of life spend more time in hospital and die younger and researches from Columbia University in New York recently decided to actually quantify that. They saw that overweight and obese females tend to have an average of 3 extra years of sickness when compared to women of normal weight. In contrast overweight and obese males have on average sickness for 1 more year when compared to their normal weight counterparts.

The research also shows that overweight people become ill more often later on in life than normal weight people and they tend to die younger too. The overweight people have higher rates of general pain, heart disease, arthritis, type 2 diabetes and other health problems that affect the ability to do normal living tasks like showering and dressing.

In order to do the research the study authors evaluated the medical records of over 13,500 patients as well as the death certificates of 84,000 patients. The results were published in the American Journal of Public Health and they showed that overweight females of below 45 years of age have more medical problems too like depression when compared to slimmer women. The overweight women often feel that they are sidelined and they receive negative impressions of themselves from their peers and adverts that idealise slim figures. This can cause them anxiety and stress which aggravates the chances of them getting sick.

The research shows that if the obesity problem in the United States continues the overall life expectancy of its citizens could decrease for the first time in decades. At present over 130 million adults in America are overweight or obese as per official government statistics meaning that they have a BMI of over 25. The figures also show that over 30% of children and teenagers (about 25 million children) are also overweight or in danger of becoming so. Another study seen by Ukmedix shows that an obese 30 year old person suffers from as many health problems as a normal weight person of 50 and that their quality of life is even worse.