Research

Mixed

Longer duration of exposure to overweight or obesity in adulthood is associated with a graded, cumulative increase in carotid intima media thickness (cIMT) and adverse cardiovascular risk factors, independent of childhood adiposity.

The longer you carry excess weight in adulthood, the more your arteries thicken and your risk factors worsen. However, this damage is cumulative, meaning that reducing your exposure to excess weight at any point in adulthood can slow or reverse this progression.

GoodSupportsHIGH confidence
Longer exposure to high adiposity in adulthood had a cumulative adverse effect on cardiovascular phenotype in later life.
Marietta Charakida et al. · The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology · 2014

Why this rating

Longitudinal cohort study with objective measures. Observational nature prevents definitive causal claims but strongly supports association.

Source

Lifelong patterns of BMI and cardiovascular phenotype in individuals aged 60–64 years in the 1946 British birth cohort study: an epidemiological study

Marietta Charakida et al. · The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology · 2014

DOI 10.1016/s2213-8587(14)70103-2

cohort · n=1273Cited 97×
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DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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