Inactivity, Obesity Are Killing Americans
More Deaths Expected From Sedentary Lifestyle and Obesity Than Smoking
WebMD News Archive
Editorial note: In the Jan. 19, 2005, edition of The Journal of the American Medical Association, the CDC issued a correction. Due to computational errors, the CDC says it overstated the number of deaths due to poor diet and inactivity. The original number of 100,000 additional deaths in 2000 compared to 1990 was decreased to 65,000 additional deaths.
March 5, 2004 - Over the next decade, America's unhealthy lifestyle is expected to cause more premature deaths than smoking, a new report shows.
"We believe diet, inactivity, and obesity -- that constellation - will be the leading cause of death if things don't change," says study researcher James S. Marks, MD, MPH, a CDC epidemiologist.
The CDC report appears in this week's issue of TheJournal of the American Medical Association.
In the report, researchers provide a complex analysis of studies on risk behaviors and deaths published from 1980 to 2002, blended with mortality data for 2000. From this, they have estimated the causes of preventable deaths during 2000.
"The numbers were striking and compelling," Marks tells WebMD. "The American people have to understand there's a lot they can do to prevent these premature deaths."
Other causes of preventable deaths: HIV, flu, and pneumonia; air pollution and other environmental toxins; car crashes; guns; sexual behavior; and illicit use of drugs.
A decade ago, when the last such report was released, tobacco was the leading cause of preventable death. "There was a pretty substantial gap between tobacco and poor diet and inactivity," says Marks. "We found that now the gap has narrowed substantially."
The numbers of smoking-related deaths have not increased -- but they also haven't dipped, says Marks. "We were disappointed not to see improvements. That tells us that the major energy has been put into getting kids not to start, but not enough attention to getting adults to quit."
Top 7 Causes of Death
The report also lists the top causes of death in 2000: