TUESDAY, Sept. 10, 2002 (HealthDayNews) -- People with physical, emotional and even sensory disabilities are much more likely to be overweight and obese than those without such setbacks.
It's well known that being obese is a risk factor for having a disability, and vice versa. But the latest study found some surprises.
While obesity and blindness often go hand-in-hand -- weight-related diabetes is a leading cause of sight loss -- the deaf, for reasons that aren't understood, are more prone to being overweight, the study found. It also showed that the disabled in general are just as likely as most everyone else to seek help losing weight if they feel they need to, said Dr. Christina Wee, a Harvard University physician and a co-author of the study.
"People with disabilities are at risk for having obesity, but on the other hand they are also as likely to try to address their weight," said Wee, also of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
"Physicians and other health providers should try to address these weight concerns and develop guidelines" for patients with disabilities, especially those with mobility trouble that impairs the ability to exercise, she added.
The findings appear in tomorrow's issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Many disabilities, like blindness and foot and toe sores, are the direct result of obesity-related diabetes. However, it's often unclear if being overweight is at the root of immobility or the other way around.
Wee and her colleagues analyzed survey data collected between 1994 and 1995 in a large national interview of more than 145,000 people. Of those, roughly 25,600 had some form of disability. Some were in wheelchairs or needed canes to walk; others were blind or deaf; some had arm and hand problems and others had severe emotional difficulties.
A quarter of those with handicaps were obese, compared with 15 percent of the rest of the survey participants. Those numbers are probably lower than what a similar survey conducted today would reveal, Wee said, since obesity has been rising dramatically in this country. More than 60 percent of American adults are now overweight or obese, according to the government.
People with modest or severe problems moving their legs and feet had the highest risk of obesity, about 2.5 times that of those without such difficulties. The blind or partially blind were 50 percent more likely than average to be obese, and the deaf and hard of hearing had a 30 percent higher risk. Those with hand and upper extremity trouble, and also those with a mental health disorder, were between 50 percent and 60 percent more likely than normal to be hazardously overweight.
In general, obese people with debilitating health problems were no less likely to try to lose weight than the overweight without such problems. That didn't apply to those with severe walking handicaps, who were 30 percent less likely to try losing weight in the past year than the rest of the people in the study. They, and those with severe arm and hand ailments, were less likely than the rest of the people in the study to have received exercise advice from a doctor.
Kenneth Ferraro, a sociologist at Purdue University, said Wee's results fit with his own research -- although he hasn't seen the link between obesity and deafness. "We've found plenty of evidence to indicate that obesity increases the risk of both upper body and lower body disability," he said.
Unlike the latest study, which was a snapshot in time, Ferraro and his colleagues have conducted so-called prospective research, in which people are followed over decades. This method allowed them to demonstrate that as a person's weight rises, so, too, does his risk of a disability -- and that the first often leads to the second.
Ferraro said there appears to be a threshold effect for body mass index (BMI) above which the risk of disability surges. That number is a BMI of 30, or the figure for a 5-foot-8-inch man who weighs 200 pounds. What's more, hitting this unhealthy mark may permanently affect the risk, even if a person then sheds weight.
"It seems as though there's a scaring effect," Ferraro said. "There can be recovery by weight loss, but it's not a simple matter that you can totally reverse."
What To Do
For more on the link between obesity and disability, try the American Obesity Association. And for more on the health effects of diabetes, try the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive ande Kidney Diseases.
