[Zababa]

For comparaison, smoking is ~10 years of life expectancy reduction https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/heal....

Surprisingly obesity seems to only replace some of your last years with years with diabetes, without decreasing your longevity https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC4951120/. I think I didn't read that study correctly, or didn't find a good one.

Air pollution might be around 1 to 3 years: https://dynomight.net/air/

A reduction of 6 months is also more than what you can expect to gain by taking statins: https://dynomight.net/statins/.

[nradov]

Severe obesity significantly decreases longevity.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/195748

That effect has been magnified by the current COVID-19 pandemic. Obesity directly causes more severe symptoms in infected patients.

https://www.wfae.org/health/2021-09-30/novant-says-9-of-10-c...

https://cardiologyres.org/index.php/Cardiologyres/article/vi...

https://reason.com/2022/01/03/cdc-covid-19-children-hospital...

[Zababa]

So severe obesity would be indeed "almost as bad as smoking" according to your article, which is more in line with what I've heard before. Thanks for the sources.

[nouveaux]

"Nevertheless, men with obesity aged 55 y and older lived 2.8 (95% CI −6.1 to −0.1) fewer y without diabetes than normal weight individuals, whereas, for women, the difference between obese and normal weight counterparts was 4.7 (95% CI −9.0 to −0.6) y. Men and women with obesity lived 2.8 (95% CI 0.6 to 6.2) and 5.3 (95% CI 1.6 to 9.3) y longer with diabetes, respectively, compared to their normal weight counterparts."

Is this study suggesting that obese people with diabetes lived longer than obese people without diabetes? I suppose that diabetes as a condition is not harmful in and of itself and perhaps leads to a healthier lifestyle?

[DarylZero]

Diabetes is extremely harmful unless perfectly controlled which it almost never is. The damage accumulates very slowly.

[Zababa]

My (uninformed) guess would be that people with diabetes are followed more closely than people without. Your point about healthier lifestyle is a good one too.

[queuebert]

> Surprisingly obesity seems to only replace some of your last years with years with diabetes

That can't possibly be right. Obesity is a negative prognostic factor in almost every disease.

[Seanambers]

I'd say quality of life is a way better measure - but its so subjective it makes it difficult.

I'm a sociable person, and in my(western) experience there are more good times when alcohol is involved, even with people who does not drink often. I get that it may have an adverse effect on health and longevity. But in the end, we are all going to die - to grow old just to be old doesn't sit right either.

[Zababa]

There's a metric know an "Disability-adjusted life year", or DALY, that tries to quantify this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disability-adjusted_life_year.

And your point about social alcohol is well taken. I have the luck of being a lightweight with drinking, so usually a glass of cider is enough for me, and with the right people it's always a good time. On the other hand, lots of people my age (young adults) tends to drink multiple pints of beer multiple times a week. They should at least be aware of the tradeoff they're making.

[throwawayboise]

> obesity seems to only replace some of your last years with years with diabetes, without decreasing your longevity

That's probably only because we can generally manage diabetes pretty well, though it does impose a lot of cost on society to do so.

[AlbertCory]

> we can generally manage diabetes pretty well

We can but it requires the patient to manage their blood sugar very, very carefully and a lot of them can't do it 100% of the time. Whenever they don't, the damage happens and it accrues. I see a guy in the 'hood who's had much of his foot amputated as a result of diabetes.

Or so I've heard. I'm not diabetic myself.