It was already known that having a high body mass index (BMS) might lead people to suffer from serious consequences – like obesity, cancer, and cardiovascular diseases. Unfortunately, this doesn’t end here. The problem is bigger than just health conditions: it also includes high financial costs, according to a study published in the journal Obesity. This means that if a person stops being obese, they could actually save money from its pockets and on healthcare costs.
The study has found that obesity causes people to lose productivity and to invert into expensive medical care. If people avoid becoming obese, they might also avoid expending massive amounts of money in trying to reach an adequate weigh that doesn’t represent a problem to their health, or in trying to have a normal life despite its disease.
This way, it might also help society to stop costing millions of dollars a year in medical care and lost wages.
“Over half the costs of being overweight can be from productivity losses, mainly due to missed work days. This means that just focusing on medical costs misses a big part of the picture, though they’re a consideration, too,” told the executive director of the Global Obesity Prevention Center at the Bloomberg School, says Bruce Y. Lee. “Productivity losses affect businesses, which in turn affects the economy, which then affects everyone.”
How much money could just an individual save?
The study showed that an obese American citizen could spend thousands of dollars when they face some health problems caused by its weight. In fact, the researchers additionally saw that the amount of money each person inverts vary depending on the individual’s age. For example, some people over the age of 40 might cost society $30,0000, although they have a regular blood pleasure and cholesterol levels.
Researchers estimated the amounts of saved money for each person since rounded ages – like 40, 50, 60 – until the average age an American citizen dies – up to 70.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins University also showed in the study how much a person could save if it’s obese and loses enough weight to be considered an individual with “overweight,” or if it’s obese and loses enough weight to become a person with a healthy weigh.
According to the study, somebody over the age of 20 can save around $17,655 in its lifetime if they lose enough weight to turn from an obese person into an “overweight” person. However, this same individual could even save more money: if it becomes an individual with a healthy weight, it could actually save up to $28,020 in its lifetime.
Those people who are 50 years old could save more than $36,000 – a 60-year-old more than $34,000, a 70-year-old more than $29,000 and an 80-year-old more than $16,000.
“The cost-saving estimates seem reasonable given what we know about the direct medical costs and productivity loss due to obesity and the efficacy of weight loss,” told Bruce Lee to Newsweek. “For a 20-year-old, lifetime estimates of cost savings are done for a long period of time. If anything, the estimates of lifetime cost savings seem conservative to me.”
Source: Obesity