TUESDAY, Nov. 17 (HealthDay News) — Surging obesity rates, especially among children, may be putting the brakes on progress made in the past few decades against heart disease, researchers report. And it doesn’t help that many obese or overweight Americans still consider their weight “normal,” as one study found. One of several studies on the subject of obesity presented Tuesday at the American Heart Association (AHA) annual meeting in Orlando, Fla., found that adults’ blood pressure and blood sugar levels are continuing to rise, fueled in large part by expanding waistlines. This is swamping recent heart-health improvements such as lowered blood levels of LDL (“bad”) cholesterol or fewer people smoking, experts said.Poring over government data between 1988-1994 and 2005-2006, researchers found that adult Americans’ average body mass index (BMI) rose from 26.5 to 28.8 over that time span. To put that in context, a BMI of 25 marks the beginning of overweight, while doctors use a BMI of 30 as the threshold for obesity.More people did achieve optimal LDL levels (22% versus 28%) and were non-smokers (rising from 45% to 50%) during the same time period, but those gains were outweighed by fewer people having good blood pressure (48% versus 43%) or blood sugar control (falling from 67% to 58%). In fact, “many people feel the decline in [heart] risk factors is leveling off and there will be an acceleration of cardiovascular disease,” said AHA spokesman Dr. Roger Blumenthal, professor of medicine in the division of cardiology at Johns Hopkins …
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