You might recall that late last year I pointed out a large Japanese longitudinal study on incidental moderate exercise and lifetime medical costs:
The authors followed up 27,738 participants aged 40-79 years and prospectively collected data on their medical expenditure and survival covering a 13-year-period. ... The present results indicate that the multiadjusted lifetime medical expenditure from the age of 40 years for those who walked ≥1 h per day was significantly lower by 7.6% in men and non-significantly lower by 2.7% in women than for those who walked <1 h per day. This decrease in lifetime medical expenditure was observed in spite of a longer life expectancy (1.38 years for men and 1.16 years for women) among those who walked ≥1 h per day.
In another, more open access recent paper, the same authors have crunched the numbers for variations in weight among study participants. The story is much the same, as one would expect:
Although four previous studies have examined the association between obesity and lifetime medical expenditure, the results were inconsistent. ... We therefore conducted a 13-year prospective observation of 41,965 Japanese adults aged 40-79 years living in the community, which accrued 392,860 person-years. We examined the association between BMI and lifetime medical expenditure, based on individual medical expenditure and life table analysis. We collected data for survival and all medical care utilisation and costs, excluding home care services provided home health aides, nursing home care and preventive health services in participants of this cohort study....
In spite of their short life expectancy, obese men and women had approximately 14.7% and 21.6% higher lifetime medical expenditure in comparison with normal weight participants, respectively.
Don't get fat, don't stay fat, and don't be a couch potato. Thus speaks the weight of evidence - but then we all knew that, right? Being unhealthy has definitive material costs in the long term: years of life shaved off, the rot of your body and mind, and the monetary cost of medical services you would otherwise not have needed. There are plenty of people in this world, far too many, who don't presently have the luxury of choice when it comes to being healthy: the genetically impaired, the immune-damaged, the infected, the wounded. Why fritter away your choice for the sake of eating and laziness? It is almost a gesture of contempt.
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