You probably suspected that heart failure, also known as congestive heart failure, contributes to about hundreds of thousands of deaths each year in the United States, and millions world wide.
And you probably also suspected that being over weight ads to the risk of heart failure, but a new study of 21,094 U.S. male doctors for two decades found that even those who were only modestly overweight had a higher risk -- and it grew along with the amount of extra weight.
According to STV:TV:
"In men who are 5 feet 10 inches tall, for every seven pounds (3.2 kg)
of excess body weight, their risk of heart failure rose on average by
11 percent over the next 20 years, the researchers wrote in the journal
Circulation.
The average age of the men at the outset of the so-called Physicians' Health Study was 53. During the study, 1,109 of them developed heart failure.
Overall, the risk of heart failure increased by 180 percent in men who met the definition of obesity according to their body mass index (BMI of 30 and higher), and by 49 percent in men who met the definition of overweight (a BMI of 25 to 30).
Conditions such as coronary artery disease and high blood pressure can leave the heart too weak or stiff to fill and pump blood efficiently."