Body Fat Becomes More Dangerous After Age 50

If you’re muddling through middle age with excess pounds around your middle, researchers in England have found another good reason to delete those extra fat cells. As you get older, being overweight becomes deleterious to the flexibility of your arteries.

When scientists at the at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Clinical Sciences Centre at Imperial College, London, examined the stiffness of the arteries of 200 people, they found that accumulations of body fat interfered with artery function. While younger people in the study still enjoyed vessel flexibility even if they were overweight, all of those in their 50s or older showed serious signs of arterial dysfunction.

“The effects of having more fat seem to be different depending on your age. It looks like young people may be able to adapt to excess body fat, but by middle age the cumulative exposure to years of obesity may start to cause permanent damage to the arteries,” notes researcher Declan O’Regan. “We don’t know for sure how body fat makes arteries stiffer, but we do know that certain metabolic products in the blood may progressively damage the elastic fibers in our blood vessels. Understanding these processes might help us to prevent the harmful effects of obesity.”