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"A concern shared by both employers and employees is that time spent in the program attending the physician and dietitian visits, and the vigilance required to maintain lifestyle modifications, might diminish time and productivity on the job," said Jennifer Iyengar, M.D., the study's lead author and an endocrinology fellow at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich. "However, we found that participation in our program was highly valued and had a positive impact at work." The total economic cost of obesity in the U.S. includes indirect costs, such as missed time from work, lost productivity at work and premature death due to obesity-related health problems, research shows. Iyengar said little is known, though, about whether weight loss interventions can improve the job performance and attendance of employees with obesity. She and her co-workers studied this question in participants in the University of Michigan Weight Management Program. The weight mana...

While increasing body mass index (BMI), a measure of obesity, was associated with increased risk for high blood pressure in all four examined ethnic groups, the prevalence of high blood pressure was almost 6 times higher among obese Hispanic adolescents compared to normal weight Hispanics. Almost 25 percent of the Hispanic adolescents in the study were obese. Here is what the researchers found when they compared the prevalence of high blood pressure between obese and normal weight adolescents in the other ethnic groups: Obese white adolescents had an approximately fourfold increase; Obese Asian adolescents, though few, had an approximately threefold increase; Obese African-American adolescents had an approximately twofold increase. "We believe we are the first to compare adolescent blood pressures to body mass index in these four major ethnic/racial groups," said Joshua Samuels, M.D., M.P.H., the study's senior author, a professor in the Department of Pediatri...