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Obesity among late adolescents continues to swell and become a problem. And at some point, such could have dire consequences and cardiovascular-related problems are most likely one of them.

A new study reveals that a person’s elevated Body Mass Index (BMI) could hold dire consequences that may lead to eventually lead to increased risks of death originating from cardiovascular causes.

For the benefit of the people who are not familiar with what BMI is, it is derived by computing an individual’s weight (in kilograms) and then dividing it by the square of his height (in meters) which would eventually categorize him or her as either underweight, normal, overweight or obese.

The study, which appears in the New England Journal of Medicine, was able to associate the BMI of individuals in their late adolescence and its relation to death from cardiovascular causes. The study was based on 2.3 million Israeli 17 year olds where height and weight were measured from 1967 to 2010.

From here, researchers assessed the association between BMI in late adolescence and death from coronary heart disease, stroke, and sudden death in adulthood by mid-2011.

It turns out that there was an increased risk of cardiovascular deaths in who were under the “accepted normal” range of BMI, in the 50th to 74th percentiles, and of death from coronary heart disease at BMI values above 20. As the scores increased, the risks of potential death from coronary heart disease, stroke, sudden death and other means elevated as well.

What would be the root cause of such?

Obesity is seen as harmful during adolescence since it was associated with possible unfavorable metabolic abnormalities. Aside from that, overweight adolescents tend to become overweight and obese as well in adulthood, leveraging the risk of cardiovascular diseases.

“The continuing increase in adolescent BMI, and the rising prevalence of overweight and obesity among adolescents, may account for a substantial and growing future burden of cardiovascular disease, particularly coronary heart disease,” explains professor Jeremy Kark of the Hebrew University-Hadassah Braun School of Public Health and Community Medicine.

Obesity is something that can be prevented or placed under control with healthy eating habits and proper activities or exercise. Aside from that however, there is also the most important role that people would need to exert as well in order for them to lead a healthy life.