US For The First Time Sees A Drop In Obesity Rates

In over a decade, for the first time, obesity rates in the United States is declining. As per a recent study published last Friday in the journal JAMA Health Forum, it was found that the obesity numbers in the United States have gone down slightly from 46% in 2022 to 45.6% in 2023. While it is only a slight decline, it is also important to note that it is the first drop recorded in almost a decade.

"What we're seeing for the first time is that curve is bending and shows a sign of hope for something that was really a threat to American public health for so many years," said John Brownstein, co-author of the study, who is also the chief innovation officer at Boston Children's Hospital and a professor at Harvard Medical School.

The study reviewed the body mass index (BMIs), a measure of obesity of 16.7 million US adults over a 10-year period. The average BMI rose annually to 30.25, which is considered obese, however, after 2022, a different trend was noticed. It plateaued in 2022, and then dropped to 30.21 in 2023.

Brownstein and his team also noted that women and adults aged 66 to 75 saw the greatest drop in obesity rates. Whereas people who live in the South, where there was the highest dispensing rate of weight loss drugs, also known as the GLP-1 receptor agonist, also so a sharp decline in obesity.

Semaglutide is also one of the drugs in the class of the GLP-1 agonists, and also an active agent found in the popular drug like Ozempic and Wegovy. The United States also saw a 700% increase in the use of weight loss drugs, and not as a side-product for diabetes, but specifically for weight loss from 2019 to 2023, mentions a 2024 study titled Shifting Trends in the Indication of Glucagon-like Peptide-1 Receptor Agonist Prescriptions: A Nationwide Analysis, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. However, these medicines are also used to mainly treat type 2 diabetes or combination of diabetes and obesity.

This is, what Brownstein thinks, has helped a slight decline in the obesity rates in the United States.

Brownstein mentions that there are other reasons too for this slight decline. For instance, looking at the pharmacy prescription, it was seen that while South had the highest dispensing rate of weight loss medication, this area also saw a disproportionately high number of COVID-19 deaths, especially among its obese population.

Another reason, mentions Benjamin Reader, paper's co-author and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, is the change in lifestyle. "You have this emergence from COVID, of which people are potentially starting to be more active again, stopping the sedentary habits that they picked up during COVID," said Reader. "All of these forces are at play, and I don't think we can disentangle them from this data."

However, obesity still remains a critical public health issue. Other experts have pointed out that there is a need to look at this positive indicator in a specific database. While this could mean that people are doing better, however, it is also important to see if these factors last long and how the rats play out over time. As of now, as per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 60% of the adults in the United States are obese, and have high blood pressure, while 23% have diabetes.