WHILE people often assume that losing weight is harder later in life, a new study concludes that this is not so. The research offers encouragement for older adults hoping to reap the health benefits of maintaining a healthy weight.
In an obesity program conducted at a hospital in the United Kingdom, weight loss was unaffected by age, with statistically equivalent results for people younger and older than 60.
Senior study author Dr. Thomas Barber, the scientific lead of the Human Metabolism Research Unit at the Warwick Medical School, in the U.K., explains that for people whose health would benefit from weight loss:
“Weight loss is important at any age, but as we get older, we’re more likely to develop the weight-related comorbidities of obesity. Many of these are similar to the effects of aging, so you could argue that the relevance of weight loss becomes heightened as we get older, and this is something that we should embrace.”
The study’s authors write that weight loss may help older individuals address more than 50 comorbidities common with age, including diabetes, osteoarthritis, and mood disorders such as anxiety and depression. Increased mortality and a general lack of well-being in older adults are also associated with obesity.
“There are a number of reasons why people may discount weight loss in older people,” says Dr. Barber. “These include an ‘ageist’ perspective that weight loss is not relevant to older people and misconceptions of reduced ability of older people to lose weight through dietary modification and increased exercise.”
The study provides evidence that weight loss programs administered by medical professionals, in particular, have value.
“Older people may feel that hospital-based obesity services are not for them,” Dr. Barber acknowledges. Nonetheless, he suggests, “Service providers and policymakers should appreciate the importance of weight loss in older people with obesity for the maintenance of health and well-being and the facilitation of healthy aging.”
The study shows, Dr. Barber says, that “Age, per se, should not contribute towards clinical decisions regarding the implementation of lifestyle management [in] older people.”
The team analyzed the medical records of 242 randomly selected people who had participated in the obesity service offered by the Warwickshire Institute for the Study of Diabetes, Endocrinology, and Metabolism (WISDEM) program between 2005 and 2016.
