Body Habitus Changes Among Adult Males From the Normative Aging Study: Relations to Aging, Smoking History and Alcohol Intake

Abstract

GRINKER, JOEL A, KATHERINE TUCKER, PANTEL VOKONAS AND DAVID RUSH. Body habitus changes among adult males from the normative aging study: relations to aging, smoking history and alcohol intake. Obes Res. 1995;3:435-446. The Normative Aging Study (NAS) recruited 2280 Boston area healthy males aged 21 to 80 in 1961 through 1970. Clinical exams have continued at 3-to 5-year intervals. Obesity was not an exclusion criterion. Stability in weight and body habitus among 867 adult participants in the NAS was evaluated at 5-and 15-year follow-ups. At study entry, age was linearly related to central adiposity [abdominal circumference (AC) and ratio of AC/Hip Breadth (HB)] throughout the entire age range (30 to 78 years) and linearly and quadratically related to weight (WT) and Body Mass Index @MI) (kg/m2) with maximal values at age 50. Over 15 years, changes in adiposity were strongly related to age; the greatest increases were among those initially 30 to 44 years of age with decrements in several adiposity measures (BMI, AC) only among the oldest subjects (60+ at entry); significant quadratic effects of age for BMI (p<.OOl), WT (p<.02) and AC (p<.Ol). There were major secular differences; men born later were heavier and fatter Vokonas 5, David Rush * at the same ages as men born earlier. Men who gained (>1 BMI) were younger while men who lost (>1 BMI) had greater initial central adiposity than others. Smoking cessation was independently associated with increments in both central and peripheral adiposity. Moderate alcohol intake was associated with lower gains in AC/HB ratios at 15 years compared with little or high consumption. In general, aging was associated with trends towards central adiposity which tended to plateau or decrease at the oldest ages.

Shift work and age as interactive predictors of body mass index among offshore workers

“…Thus, in this group, the pattern of results was similar to that found for population samples (4-6), and it is consistent with the fact that day shifts (even if 12 hours in duration) do not involve circadian disruption and the associated physiological, psychological, and life-style adaptation problems (12,33,34). Moreover, the age (50-55 years) at which BMI reached a plateau in the day shift group agreed well with published data (4,5).…”

“…Second, previous studies of shiftwork and BMI have not examined curvilinear effects of age and duration of shiftwork exposure, although epidemiologic research indicates that the relation between age and BMI is not purely linear (4,24), and the duration of shiftwork exposure may follow a similar pattern. Thus, in this study, the possible curvilinear effects of age and shiftwork exposure were examined by evaluating their linear and quadratic effects in relation to BMI.…”

The association of lifetime alcohol use with measures of abdominal and general adiposity in a large-scale European cohort

“…Positive associations between the use of alcohol and abdominal adiposity have consistently been reported for men and frequently for women in cross-sectional (Marti et al, 1991;Troisi et al, 1991;Slattery et al, 1992;Randrianjohany et al, 1993;Dallongeville et al, 1998;Han et al, 1998) or prospective studies (Grinker et al, 1995;Vadstrup et al, 2003;Vernay et al, 2004). Studies showing different results focused on the role of alcohol for the change of anthropometric measures (Koh-Banerjee et al, 2003;Halkjaer et al, 2004Halkjaer et al, , 2006.…”

Prevalence of the Metabolic Syndrome and Associated Factors in Korean Cancer Survivors

“…This association is due to the inevitable physiological processes of aging, such as declining basal metabolic rate, changes in body composition, and unhealthy lifestyle (Bechtold et al, 2006). While muscle mass decreases up to 40% from 20 to 70 years of age (Villareal et al, 2005), fat mass increases with the predominance of abdominal fat accumulation (Visser et al, 1998), and these aging-related changes lead to increasing intra-abdominal fat, specifically central obesity, which is associated with cardiovascular disease risk factors (Grinker et al, 1995;Bo et al, 2009). Management of metabolic syndrome in the elderly is difficult because co-management of multiple co-morbid conditions is often required (Bechtold et al, 2006).…”