TEENS who are overweight or obese have higher chances of dying from heart disease down the line, but that extra risk virtually vanishes if they shed the spare pounds as adults.

    That is according to a new study that tracked almost 19,000 men starting at age 18 — when all of them were Harvard University undergrads — for more than half a century on average.

    “We have lots of data showing that if you are obese in middle age, it increases your risk of dying,” said I-Min Lee from Harvard Medical School in Boston, who worked on the study.

    “What we have less data on is, what if you’re heavy when you’re younger? How does that impact your health later on?”

    The findings, Lee said, show that it is important to keep extra weight off in the first place — but if young adults are overweight, they can lower their risk of getting heart diseases in the future by slimming down.

    It turned out that being heavy at both the early and mid-life health checks increased the risk of ultimately dying from heart disease.

    Obese young men had almost double the risk of their slimmer peers for heart disease death. Compared to normal-weight Harvard alumni, middle-aged men were 25 percent more likely to die of heart disease if they were overweight and 60 percent more likely if they were obese.

    However, the extra heart risk that came with being overweight and obese early in life disappeared in men who were no longer heavy at their follow-up health assessment, the researchers reported this week in the Archives of Internal Medicine. (SD-Agencies)