- Adults who lost more than 5% of their body weight in their early 50s saw improved heart health later in life, according to a recent study.
- Participants’ blood pressure, “good” cholesterol and inflammation changed at about the same rate as adults who stayed at a healthy weight.
- Weight gain in the early 50s sped up the decline in heart health markers, according to the report.
- People who lost weight saw most of those markers decline at about the same rate as people who stayed at a healthy weight, the researchers found.
Losing weight in your 50s, even a modest amount, may help protect your heart health later in life, according to new research.
Adults who lost weight in their early 50s saw their blood pressure, “good” cholesterol and inflammation change at about the same rate as adults who stayed at a healthy weight, according to a study from researchers at University College London and the University of Glasgow.
Adults who gained weight in their early 50s saw those same measures worsen faster by their early 60s, the researchers reported. The authors posted the study on a research-sharing website on September 4. Other scientists have not yet peer-reviewed the work.
Charis Bridger-Staatz, PhD, a senior research fellow at UCL, led the study. She told Healthline the main takeaway for adults over 50 was that “it’s not too late to try and do things that are going to improve your health.”
Nearly half of U.S. adults ages 40 to 59 had obesity from 2021 to 2023, the highest rate of any adult age group, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Among all U.S. adults, around 31.7% were overweight, according to the CDC.
The findings can apply to Americans because British and U.S. adults share similar weight patterns, said Solveig Cunningham, PhD, a professor of global health at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health. Cunningham, who was not involved in the research, told Healthline that Americans tend to gain weight across adulthood.
“By the time you get into your 50s, close to the majority of Americans already have obesity. Many others have overweight,” she said.
The World Health Organization (WHO) calls obesity a chronic disease. Healthcare professionals diagnose overweight and obesity using a person’s weight and height, or body mass index (BMI).
Tracking weight and heart health after 50
Bridger-Staatz said the team set out to learn who lost weight and kept it off before GLP-1 weight loss medications became available, and whether that weight loss improved health over time.
She said researchers had long assumed that “once people had become overweight or developed obesity, people didn’t really lose weight and certainly not sustained it.”
The team also asked, she said, “can we try and say something positive about health that isn’t just this kind of like doom and gloom?”
The researchers used the British 1958 National Child Development Study, which has followed about 17,500 people born during one week in 1958. Of those, 6,309 took part in a health check in their early 60s, according to the report.
The team compared each person’s highest weight between ages 23 and 42 with their weight between ages 50 and 55. Researchers sorted people by whether they gained or lost more than 5% of their body weight and kept the change. For a 200-pound person, 5% equals 10 pounds.
To track heart health, the team compared blood tests and blood pressure readings at ages 44 and 62 with those of people who maintained a healthy weight.
“We know everyone’s heart health is kind of going to get a little bit worse over that time because you are aging and that’s expected,” Bridger-Staatz said. The question, she said, was, “Does it slow the rate at which people’s heart health is getting worse?”
Can losing weight in your 50s help your heart?
Weight loss slowed the decline in heart health for people who were overweight and for people with obesity, according to the report.
People who were overweight and lost weight had the strongest positive results. By age 62, their body fat-to-lean tissue ratio matched that of the healthy-weight group. The authors wrote that differences in body fat may partly explain why weight changes affected heart health.
People with obesity who lost weight had less body fat at 62 than people in the other obesity groups, according to the report.
Sudhakara Chennareddy, MD, prevention cardiologist in the Center for Cardiovascular Prevention, Metabolism and Lipids at Georgia Heart Institute, told Healthline those results are what he’d expect. He was not involved in the research.
“Even losing 5% has beneficial effects on the cardiovascular side effects,” he said.
Long-term blood sugar was the exception. For people with obesity who lost weight, it rose more than in the healthy-weight group, though the authors reported that the result was not statistically significant.
A 2025 study of more than 15,000 U.S. adults, published in Endocrinology, Diabetes & Metabolism, found that adults who had previously had obesity tended to have higher blood sugar than those who had never had it, even after their BMI dropped.
How weight gain after 50 affects heart health
“It’s not the patient’s fault… We need to treat this one like any other chronic disease, like we treat hypertension or we treat diabetes,” Chennareddy said.
Compared with the healthy-weight group, people who gained weight in their early 50s had faster increases in blood pressure, blood fats, and inflammation, and declines in “good” cholesterol.
Obesity is a chronic metabolic disease that leads to inflammation in the body, which can raise the risk of heart attack and stroke and worsen cholesterol levels, Chennareddy said.
“The more weight they gain, they develop prediabetes and diabetes and fatty liver disease as well,” he said.
These changes were largest for people who developed obesity or already had obesity and gained more weight, the researchers reported. This group also saw faster increases in long-term blood sugar levels.
About 37% of participants gained more than 5% of their body weight in their early 50s. Only about 6% lost weight and kept it off, according to the study.
“To me, that’s sort of the stronger message,” Cunningham said of the findings. Her advice for adults in their 50s is to avoid gaining weight.
Health effects of weight fluctuation
People with obesity who lost and then gained the weight back saw faster drops in “good” cholesterol and faster rises in inflammation and long-term blood sugar.
By age 62, they weighed slightly less, on average, than people whose obesity remained steady, according to the report’s data. They also carried more body fat and had more inflammation.
Weight cycling can do more harm than steady weight, Chennareddy said. He gave the example of someone who gains 20 pounds, loses 30 and then gains 20 again. “That is even more detrimental,” he said.
When people lose weight, the body slows its resting metabolism, he said. When the weight comes back, “most of the weight they gain is fat, not muscle,” he said. Even someone who loses and regains 5% to 7% of their body weight may end up with slightly less muscle and more fat, he said.
Some research has shown that weight fluctuation is associated with a higher risk of high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease-related death.
The study’s weight changes took place between about 2008 and 2013, according to the study’s timeline.
Wegovy, a GLP-1 medication for weight management, launched in the United Kingdom in September 2023, according to the UK Department of Health and Social Care.
Cunningham said the weight-cycling findings raised questions for people who take GLP-1 medications. She said drugmakers’ own data show that “once you get off of those, your weight is going to go right back to where it was before, possibly even worse.”
That could create the same up-and-down pattern, Cunningham said. She added that researchers don’t yet know “what happens in the really long term” for people who take these medications.
The study showed links between weight changes and heart health and cannot prove that weight changes caused the results, according to the authors. They wrote that the small number of people who lost weight made those results less precise.
Bridger-Staatz also said the team did not look at why or how people lost weight.
Preserving heart health after 50
Cunningham said adults lose muscle and bone mass with age, and that the loss is especially pronounced for women in their 50s and older. “Maintaining muscles and maintaining bones is so, so important,” she said.
Staying active helps people keep muscle, even without weight loss, Cunningham said. “Even a little bit of activity…just keep moving,” she said.
GLP-1 medications work best as part of a “comprehensive plan,” Chennareddy said.
With his patients, he said he recommends continuous improvement rather than setting a goal to lose a specific amount of weight within a set period.
Patients who treat weight loss as “a gradual process” do better long term, he said.
“The most important thing is not to do fad diets,” Chennareddy said.
For people losing weight, Chennareddy recommended:
- more legumes, beans and lentils, and fewer simple carbohydrates
- added sugars kept under 10% of daily calories
- fish, beans, nuts and olive oil instead of protein bars and fried foods
- more dietary fiber, which helps promote satiety
Anyone considering changes to their weight can talk with a healthcare professional about their weight history and goals.
Losing Weight in Your 50s May Protect Your Heart Health Later in Life
Source: Pinoy Lang Sakalam
0 (mga) komento:
Mag-post ng isang Komento