Research

Mixed

Higher BMI (overweight, obesity, and morbid obesity) is associated with a significantly increased lifetime risk of incident cardiovascular disease and a greater proportion of life lived with cardiovascular morbidity compared to normal BMI, despite similar or slightly higher all-cause longevity in the overweight group.

Maintaining a normal BMI (18.5-24.9) is associated with the lowest lifetime risk of developing cardiovascular disease and the most years lived free of heart conditions. While being overweight might not shorten your total lifespan as much as obesity, it significantly increases the number of years you will spend living with cardiovascular disease, reducing your quality of life and increasing healthcare burdens.

WeakSupportsVERY_HIGH confidence
In this study, obesity was associated with shorter longevity and significantly increased risk of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality compared with normal BMI. Despite similar longevity compared with normal BMI, overweight was associated with significantly increased risk of developing CVD at an earlier age, resulting in a greater proportion of life lived with CVD morbidity.
Sadiya S. Khan et al. · JAMA Cardiology · 2018

Why this rating

Large-scale pooled cohort study (190,672 participants) with long-term follow-up and direct measurement of BMI and CVD events.

Source

Association of Body Mass Index With Lifetime Risk of Cardiovascular Disease and Compression of Morbidity

Sadiya S. Khan et al. · JAMA Cardiology · 2018

DOI 10.1001/jamacardio.2018.0022

cohort · n=190672Cited 1,061×
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DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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