Americans are living longer. Recent headlines have proclaimed the news. While many assume we will continue to add years to our lives, a researcher at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center finds that may not be the case.

In fact, there is one “Big” factor that may soon begin erasing the gains Americans have made in life expectancy – obesity. It’s one Patti Landers knows all too well.

Landers is a licensed and registered dietician at the OU Health Sciences Center. She counsels obese and overweight people on how to lose weight. Yet, she currently finds herself fighting that same battle against extra pounds.

“The fact is that I’m now 51,” said Landers. “And when I went through menopause, I gained over 10 pounds; and what happens if you don’t get on top of these things, it gets worse and worse and worse.”

Landers is among the two-thirds of Americans considered overweight. She is not obese, but a growing number of Oklahomans are. In the past fifteen years, the number of obese Oklahomans has climbed from one in 10 to one in every five people in this state; and may now be approaching one in every three.

“So the real concern is whether our children are going to live shorter lives and be less healthy than their parents,” said Bruce Carnes, PhD. “It’s really worrisome because the trends are not good.”

Carnes is an OU Health Sciences Center researcher who has been evaluating the impact of obesity on lifespan. He said life expectancy in the United States was only 25 years at the time of the American Revolution. It had doubled by 1900 and today it is around 75 years in men, 80 for women.

“ So we’ve seen this huge gain- the largest gain in life expectancy in recorded history,” he added. “ So you would expect that this would continue.”

However, in an article recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Carnes and a team of fellow researchers uncover flaws in those expectations. In fact, they find we may actually begin losing years instead of gaining in life expectancy. Their research points to obesity as one of the largest obstacles.

“The point is we were able to hypothetically eliminate obesity and calculate what life expectancy would be in its absence.,” Carnes explained. “If we did that today, we would see about a one-half to three-quarter of a year gain in life expectancy. That doesn’t sound like much. People might yawn when they hear that. The fact is that exceeds the cost to life expectancy of all accidents. So if you think about all the car wrecks, homicides, suicides - obesity exceeds that already.”

Landers, meantime, is taking aim at her own weight issues and helping others do the same through new weight loss programs at the OU Health Sciences Center. Still, Carnes and fellow researchers predict if the obesity trends continue in the United States, particularly in children, and effective interventions are not found, then the life shortening effect of obesity could climb to two-to-five years within the next few decades. According to Carnes, if indeed we lose two to five years in life expectancy due to obesity, it will rival the losses caused by heart disease and cancer.