Grammy Award-winning singer and American Idol alum Mandisa died of complications from class III obesity,
ccording to an autopsy report obtained by People.
The 47-year-old was found dead by friends in her Franklin, Tenn.,
home on April 18 and her manner of death was listed as natural.
Typically, obesity isn’t listed as the cause of death on a death certificate, Dr. Katherine Saunders,
clinical assistant professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine and co-founder of Intellihealth, tells Yahoo Life
owever, “weight-related health complications” from the chronic disease are associated with “very significant morbidity and mortality,” she says.
The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that higher-than-optimal body mass index (BMI)
“caused an estimated 5 million deaths from noncommunicable diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, cancers,
neurological disorders, chronic respiratory diseases, and digestive disorders,” in 2019.
Saunders says that life-threatening complications from obesity can also include heart attack, heart failure, sudden cardiac death, stroke and pulmonary embolism.