Obese Men Fare Worse In Car Crashes
03/31/2010
If you're an obese man, you not only have a higher risk for heart disease and diabetes but also of being seriously injured in a car crash.
Work just published by the online journal Public Library of Science Medicine shows that obese men are more prone to serious injuries of the upper body than men of normal weight and those who are just a little bit heavy in a head-on collision. A similar pattern wasn't found in women.
To find out the effects of weight on crash risks, a team from Injury Research Center at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee came up with fat crash test dummies in a computerized simulation of crashes. Typically, dummies of normal weight and dimensions are used for the design and testing of vehicle interiors. But more than 30 percent of American adults are obese.
Tests confirmed what the researchers found in real-world data taken from the federal National Automotive Sampling System on about 11,000 head-on collisions: Obese male drivers had a higher risk of more serious injuries and injuries to the head, face, chest and spine. Overweight people had a lower risk of injury.Women suffered more injuries in the abdominal region.
Read more at:http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2010/03/obese_men_fare_poorly_in_car_c.html
