As obesity increasingly becomes a global health concern, researchers all over the world try to figure out what we can do to maintain a healthy body and respectively a healthy body mass index.

The latest study on obesity offers people suffering from this “disease” the chance of improving their condition. Researchers have long emphasized the importance of physical activity in our daily life and the new study does not make any exception.

More exactly, it suggests that physical activity may reduce the risk of obesity in people with a genetic mutation that predisposes them to high body mass index. According to background information in the study, variations of a particular gene, known as the fat mass and obesity associated (FTO) gene, are widely acknowledged to be linked with a high body mass index. These mutations occur in about 30 percent of European populations and are associated with a 1.75-kilogram (3.9 lb.) increase in body weight.

For the study, researchers at the University of Maryland studied DNA samples from 704 healthy Amish adults, average age 43.6. Fifty-four percent of men and 63.7 percent of women were overweight, while 10.1 percent of men and 30.5 percent of women were obese. The participants were also fitted with “accelerometers,” measuring their precise movements over a period of time.

The researchers surprisingly found that Amish people with the genetic variant were no more likely to be overweight than those who had the regular version of the gene as long as they exercised three to four hours every day (that included moderate activity such as brisk walking, housecleaning and gardening).

“Our results strongly suggest that the increased risk of obesity due to genetic susceptibility can be blunted through physical activity. Some of the genes shown to cause obesity in our modern environment may not have had this effect a few centuries ago when most people’s lives were similar to that of present-day Amish farmers,” Dr. Soren Snitker, of the University of Maryland and lead-author of the research, said.

“These findings emphasize the important role of physical activity in public health efforts to combat obesity, particularly in genetically susceptible people," the authors concluded in the September 8 issue of the journal Archives of Internal Medicine, confirming once again that staying active keeps pounds away.

Maybe with the appearance of this study people will try to take obesity seriously. It is no longer a secret that obesity comes itself with health risks such as heart disease and metabolic problems. Moreover, obesity is also known to increase people’s risk for various forms of cancer, stroke, osteoarthritis, gall bladder disease, liver disease and pregnancy complications.

The latest report on obesity released last month by the nonprofit Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation under the title “F as in Fat: How Obesity Policies Are Failing in America, 2008,” found that more than 25 percent of adults are obese in 28 US states up from 19 states in 2006. The figures are far from being optimistic, in fact are worse than expected, considering the fact that the US aims to reduce the prevalence of overweight and obesity among adults to less than 15 percent and among children to less than 5 percent by the year 2010.