
TUESDAY, Jan. 24, 2023 (HealthDay News) -- Any 'middle-age spread' of excess weight around your tummy could raise your risk of becoming frail decades later, a new study suggests.Obese folks who've packed on pounds around their waist are more likely to develop symptoms of frailty, including exhaustion, weak grip strength, slow walking speed and reduced physical activity levels, researchers say. Those symptoms can make a person more likely to hurt themselves in a fall, suffer disability, require hospitalization, have a lower quality of life and die prematurely.Frailty affects as many as 17% of older adults, according to the American Academy of Family Physicians.The new study, published Jan. 23 in BMJ Open, tracked more than 4,500 people in Norway for an average 21 years, starting at an...