As Years Spent Obese Rise, So Do Heart Risks

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Study strengthens link between excess pounds and cardiovascular troubles

By Steven Reinberg

HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, July 16 (HealthDay News) -- There's more bad news for overweight Americans: A 30-year study finds the risk for heart disease rises the longer someone is obese.

"Each year of obesity was associated with about a 2 to 4 percent higher risk of subclinical coronary heart disease," said study lead author Jared Reis, an epidemiologist with the U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

"Subclinical" heart disease means damage to arteries that shows up in markers such as calcium buildup on arterial walls, but has not yet developed into symptomatic illness.

"Those with longest duration of both overall obesity and abdominal obesity tended to have the highest risk" for subclinical disease, Reis said.

The report was published in the July 17 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

In the new study, Reis' team used scans to track calcium buildup in the heart arteries in almost 3,300 adults 18 to 30 years old. When the study began in the mid-1980s, none of the participants were obese.

During the course of the study, however, more than 40 percent became obese and 41 percent developed abdominal obesity (excess belly fat). Those who became obese tended to stay obese for years, the researchers noted.

The investigators found that 27.5 percent of these long-term obese participants showed signs of heart disease, and the problem got worse the longer the individual had been obese.

More than 38 percent of those with more than 20 years spent obese had calcified arteries compared with only about a quarter of those who never put on that level of excess weight, the findings showed.

Among those with overall obesity, 6.5 percent had more dangerous "extensive" arterial calcification, as did 9 percent of those with obesity centered around the belly area. In contrast, only about 5 percent of those who were not obese had this extensive calcification, the researchers found.

Reis said the findings could have dire implications as Americans age.

"With the increased prevalence of obesity over the last 30 years, younger individuals are becoming more obese at a younger age than in previous generations," he noted. "This longer duration of obesity may have important implications on the future burden of subclinical heart disease and potentially rates of clinical heart disease in the United States."

Another heart expert agreed.

"Obesity rates in adults and children have increased markedly in the United States over the last 25 years," said Dr. Gregg Fonarow, a professor of cardiology at the University of California, Los Angeles. "This is particularly concerning as obesity is associated with an increased risk of diabetes, premature cardiovascular disease, and mortality."

Dr. David Katz, director of Yale University's Prevention Research Center, said he also worries about rising obesity rates among the young.

"I have long feared that in an age of increasingly prevalent type 2 diabetes among children, the day may dawn when angina is an adolescent rite of passage alongside acne," Katz said.

This new study compounds that worry, he said. "It demonstrates just what common sense would suggest: That the longer the exposure to the adverse effects of obesity, the greater the harm to the coronary arteries."

According to Katz, "this study is yet another reason -- as if we needed one -- to devote all possible effort to the prevention, control and reversal of rampant obesity in childhood."

Nutritionists: FDA Trans Fat Ban Good for America's Heart Health

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They urge greater use of healthier oils, like canola oil or other vegetable oils, in food-making process

By Dennis Thompson

HealthDay Reporter

FRIDAY, Nov. 8 (HealthDay News) -- The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's proposal to ban trans fats from the food supply will trigger some scrambling by manufacturers and restaurant chains, but ultimately it will be a boon to the nation's health, dietitians say.

In fact, food manufacturers had been pivoting away from trans fats before the FDA announced its proposal Thursday, searching for useful substitutes.

"The lion's share of the added trans fats have been removed from our food supply. But this is a good step toward eliminating the remaining amount that continues to pose heart disease risk for many people," said Kim Larson, a registered dietitian nutritionist and spokeswoman for the Academy of Nutrition & Dietetics.

Even so, the FDA estimates that totally eliminating trans fats could prevent 20,000 heart attacks and 7,000 deaths due to heart disease each year.

Food makers first adopted partially hydrogenated vegetable oils -- the source of trans fats -- as a substitute for butter, due to health concerns over the saturated fats contained in butter, explained Cleveland Clinic dietitian Kristin Kirkpatrick.

Using trans fats to make a cracker gives it flakiness and "adds a buttery taste without putting butter in it," Kirkpatrick said. Trans fats also can be used to add a creamy taste, she said, noting that non-dairy creamers are loaded with the artificial fats.

Other foods that contain trans fats include margarine, prepared desserts, canned cake frosting, microwave popcorn, frozen pizzas and boxed cookies, nutritionists noted.

But the food industry has progressed to the point where trans fats can be replaced with healthier options, with no effect on food's taste or texture, Kirkpatrick said.

"I think this is an opportunity to look at some of those healthier oils, like canola oil or other vegetable oils, and how they can be incorporated into foods that traditionally used trans fats," Kirkpatrick said. "I think we can do that without affecting taste."

Trans fats are created in an industrial process that adds hydrogen to liquid vegetable oils. These partially hydrogenated vegetable oils are solid at room temperature.

Trans fats became popular because of their versatility in food production. They make processed foods "shelf-stable," able to stay on supermarket shelves for months without going bad. Fast food restaurants loved trans fats because they could be used repeatedly in commercial deep fryers without having to be replaced, according to the American Heart Association.

But, trans fats gained a notorious reputation because they literally do everything wrong in the human body when it comes to cholesterol.

Trans fats simultaneously increase LDL (bad) cholesterol levels and lower HDL (good) cholesterol levels, nutritionists explained.

They also cause inflammation, said Penny Kris-Etherton, a registered dietitian and professor of nutrition at Penn State University. "Inflammation is not only a root cause of heart disease, but other chronic diseases as well," she said.