Oluwaseyitan Rufai                                                                                                            May14th 2018

 

Writing for The Sciences                                                                                                Deedra Brown            

 

The effect of Body Mass Index (BMI) on risk of Cardio Vesicular Disease

Abstract

Heart disease continues to be the leading cause of death in the United States of America accounting for almost one in every four death. There are about 92.1 million American adults living with some type of cardiovascular disease. The objective of this reviews was to determine the relationship between Body Mass Index and Cardiovascular risk factors. A search through various electronic databases like pub-med and Google-Scholar produced four studies that were relevant to my literature review. These articles supported the claim that there is a direct relationship between Body Mass Index and risk of cardiovascular disease. The researchers also found there was a relationship between Body Mass Index and the amount of life lived with cardiovascular disease risk factors. These articles as a whole stated that as Body Mass Index increases risk of developing cardiovascular disease risk factors increase as well. It also seemed to suggest that as Body Mass Index increases the amount of life lived with these cardiovascular disease risk factors increases as well. Many studies have been conducted on this topic and all the evidence shows a clear correlation between Body Mass index and cardiovascular risk factors.

 

Introduction

 

            About 2,300 Americans die of cardiovascular disease each day an average of 1 death every 38 seconds.(1) Cardiovascular Disease generally refers to conditions that involve narrowed or blocked blood vessels that lead to the heart. Common symptoms of cardiovascular disease include fatigue, shortness of breath, irregular heartbeat and chest pain. There are many different examples of cardiovascular diseases including things like stroke, heart attacks and atherosclerosis. A stroke occurs when the blood vessels that feed the brain get blocked. They are usually blocked by a blood clot and when this happens the brain cells will begin die. When the brain cells die processes that are controlled by the brain like heart function are stopped. A heart is caused by blood flow to the heart being blocked by a blood clot. This lack of blood flow causes the part of the heart muscle to die. People with cardiovascular diseases can live a normal life however lifestyle and diet changes must be made in order to survive.

An individual’s healthy weight range is constantly changing as they age because people are always growing. The Body mass index (BMI) is a specific measure of body size by combining s a person’s weight with their height.  BMI screening is a tool that doctors can use to indicate whether a person is underweight, healthy weight, excess weight or obese. If a patient’s body mass index is outside of a specific range their health risk can increase tremendously. Being a weight that is to low can lead to health outcomes like osteoporosis and anemia. Having a weight that is to high can lead to health outcomes like type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular problems. BMI is an accurate way to measure if an individual is in a healthy weight range however it is not perfect. The BMI screening does not count for factors like age sex and muscle mass which are all important factors for determining if an individual is a healthy weight range.

After careful examination of the numerous of studies conducted on this topic, the literature review provides information on the correlation between an individual’s Body Mass index and their risk factors for Cardiovascular Diseases like strokes and heart attacks. The purpose of the literature review was to analyze the current research studies that have gone deeper into he relationships between BMI and cardio vascular disease risk factors.

This literature review focused on four different relationships between BMI and Cardiovascular disease risk factors. The four relationships that this literature review focused on were on the relationships in African Americans, the amount of years lived with cardio vascular diseases, the effect on individuals with a low BMI and finally the effect change in diet had on cardiovascular disease risk factors. Race plays an important factor in the body mass index so the researchers in this study wanted to determine if all the races would react the same. Researchers also wanted to discover if increasing BMI had any effect on the amount of years lived with cardio vascular diseases. They dove deeper into the relationship between BMI and cardiovascular risk factors by discussed analyzing if BMI causes people to develop cardio vascular risk factors at a young age. A lot of research has been done on the results of increasing BMi on risk factors however not much has been done on low BMIs which should have an impact as well. This literature review also focused on the relationship of low BMI’s on risk factors. The effectiveness of the change in nutrition was also discussed in this literature review. Changing the diet of individuals would have a relationship to the persons BMI which would in then have an influence on a person’s cardiovascular risk factors.

This literature review will be first focus on how the subjects for the study were selected and how their data like BMI and Cardiovascular risk factors were determined. The purpose of this literature review further details the relationship between BMI and cardiovascular risk factors. This literature review used current studies to quantitively measure the relationship between these two variables. The current trend in the relationship between BMI and cardio vascular risk factors is as BMI increase cardiovascular risk factor increases as well.

 

                                                                Analysis

  Participant selection

            All of the studies in this experiment used a similar strategy of selecting participants for their study. The study that analyzed the relationship between BMI and years lived with cardiovascular disease risk factors pooled individual-level data from adults between the ages of (20-39) (40-59) and (60-79). They made sure all their participants were free of clinical CVD at baseline with available BMI Index and CVD outcomes data. The researchers that studied the relationship in African American’s obtained their data from the Centers for Disease Control and prevention. Data of individuals with BMi greater than 30 grouped by gender and race were collected for the U.S. States Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Colorado. The researchers that studied the impact of diet changes on cardiovascular disease got their participants from a diet-exercise program and they excluded participants with known metabolic and hormonal diseases that would skew their results. The study that investigated the relationship of individuals with low BMI and cardiovascular disease selected participants from the Asia Cohort Consortium with BMI values lower than 16 and studied their data.

 

 

Measurement in the change of Cardiovascular risk factors

            To determine the changes in Cardiovascular risk factors researchers who  studied  different races, lower BMI4 values and lifestyle changed used a survey to ask respondents if they had developed a cardio vascular disease. The two cardio vascular disease that they asked about were heart attacks and strokes. They grouped individuals by BMI value and got a percentage value by dividing the number of individuals that had the risk factor over the total amount of participants with that BMI value. These percentage of individuals who had developed risk factors at each BMI value were then compared to the other BMI values. For the article that analyzed the amount of years life risk factors the researchers used a similar approach however their survey also included the question “at what did you develop the risk factor”?

 

Conclusion

            in conclusion, studies have shown that higher BMI values are directly corelated to cardio vascular risk outcomes. Many reliable studies have agreed with the evidence stated in this literature review showing that relationship stated in this review is  most likely definite. Future research on individuals with low BMI values could be done to see if it is related cardiovascular risk factors.

             

 

           

 

 

 

 

 

Work Cited

 

Akil, Luma, and H Anwar Ahmad. “Relationships between Obesity and Cardiovascular Diseases in Four Southern States and Colorado.” Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved, U.S. National Library of Medicine, 2011, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22102306.