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Being Slightly Overweight May Lead To Longer Life
Hugh Pickens writes "Findings of a new study show that underweight people and those who are extremely obese die earlier than people of normal weight — but those who are only a little overweight actually live longer than people of normal weight. 'It's not surprising that extreme underweight and extreme obesity increase the risk of dying, but it is surprising that carrying a little extra weight may give people a longevity advantage,' said one of the coauthors of the study. 'It may be that a few extra pounds actually protect older people as their health declines, but that doesn't mean that people in the normal weight range should try to put on a few pounds.' The study examined the relationship between body mass index and death among 11,326 adults in Canada over a 12-year period. The study showed that underweight people were 70 percent more likely than people of normal weight to die, and extremely obese people were 36 percent more likely to die. But overweight individuals defined as a body mass index of 25 to 29.9 were 17 percent less likely to die than people of a normal weight defined as a BMI of 18.5 to 24.9. The relative risk for obese people was nearly the same as for people of normal weight. The authors controlled for factors such as age, sex, physical activity, and smoking. 'Overweight may not be the problem we thought it was,' said Dr. David H. Feeny, a senior investigator at Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research. 'Overweight was protective.'"
Wow, that makes me feel better about the batch of chocolate cheese I whipped up this weekend and the fact that later in the week, I'm going to experiment with substituting it for ganache in a chocolate truffle recipe.
Of course, the study took place in Canada. Skinny, underweight people dying faster in the cold of Canada just seems like a no brainer. I'd like to see the study replicated in the tropics to see if the numbers stand up somewhere that extra insulation doesn't help as much.
Based on the study, I need to lose 24 more pounds to get my BMI into the 25-29.9 range that had the highest longevity and I'm currently in the same longevity range as normal weight people. Woo hoo.
Start a happiness pandemic
Someone with a high BMI might be overweight - or they might be in really good shape and have lots of muscle. Just something to think about.
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Then let me ask this. If slightly overweight seems to be healthy, then how was the "ideal" weight range determined?
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Sounds to me like the definition of "over-weight" is based on appearance instead of health.
As someone who has been extremely underweight (body fat percentage down to 3.4%), 50 pounds overweight, and also a track runner in good shape, I can agree with this. Underweight is by FAR the worse: you feel absolutely horrible because your body doesn't have the nutrients you need to rebuild your body and keep it in good shape. It took me years to completely recover from that. There is nothing worse than waking up in the morning and feeling just as bad as when you went to bed because your body hasn't been able to repair itself in the night.
If you are the exact weight you need to be, then you need to have a very well balanced diet, that includes all the nutrients you need in the proper proportions. Otherwise, obviously, you are going to be missing a few nutrients you need.
If you are a little overweight, it's not nearly as hard to have a balanced diet: you can have a higher percentage of carbohydrates and lower percentage of protein in your diet and still be ok, because you are eating more than you need of both. It is more flexible and easier, even if less attractive.
And don't forget to eat broccoli. You're going to have to eat a lot of beef and wheat and other foods to make up for the nutrients you are not getting in green vegetables. That can put you far overweight, especially as you age.
Qxe4
I'm sure you're feeling really smart now, having repeated the endless slashdot correlation does not prove causation meme. It's so great that every 14 year old slashdotter seems to know more about statistics than scientists do.
You're even closer to your "best of slashdot" award by not even reading the summary, or not knowing what "corrected for physical activity" means. But beware: the hundreds of "BMI is stupid because I'm not fat/It's all muscle/my bones are heavy" commenters are on your heels. It's surprising that there's not a single really overweight person commenting here, considering that 90% of overweight (by BMI) are simply fat. But maybe, just maybe, all the geeks here are secret superheros.
Fleur de Sel
"They" say being slightly overweight leads to a longer life than "normal" weight. Perhaps the reality is "they've" defined normal a little too low.
You're being a bit flame-batish, but I do have to agree. The "fashion industry" (or rather what a bunch of homosexual men and weird women) promotes a form of female beauty that's largely at odds with the ideal as found throughout most of human history.
A few months ago my wife and I were watching Some Like It Hot, and during the scene where Marilyn Munroe sings, my wife commented that according to modern fashions, she would be considered overweight, if not outright fat. It struck me right there that here is one of the most sensual women of the modern era in one of the sexiest scenes ever to be found in the movies (all praise Billy Wilder with putting up with her to make this film), and a pack of queers and freeky fashionistas have programmed into so many that having some seventeen year old girl with the figure of an eight year old boy is superior to the greatest sex goddess of modern times.
So, from all the guys who secretly fantasize about the golden age of Hollywood sexpots, here's a big "fuck you" to the fashion industry, truly the most perverse and vile aspect of modern media around.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The article mentions that they "controlled" for physical activity. Does that mean that they compared like for like? Fat couch potatoes with skinny ones, fat joggers with skinny ones? I'm not a statistician but it seems on the face of it there's a problem: Being overweight generally causes you to become less physically active, so comparing normal joggers to heavy joggers is comparing someone of high-normal fitness to an obese person who's extraordinarily fit (for their weight range). The comparison may not be fair because that extraordinarily fit person could have good genes to begin with.
That aside, people who are skinny are sometimes skinny for health related reasons: cancer, AIDS, drugs. Here it's not the fact that they're skinny which is the issue but their low weight is a symptom of health problems. A more complex take on that would be a person who has lost weight because they were ordered to by their doctor. They're diabetic or have high blood pressure. So yes, they've lost weight and are healthier than before, but still less healthy than the slightly overweight person whose doctor didn't make them lose weight because they didn't have metabolic syndrome. Again, the low weight would not be a cause of illness, but an (indirect) effect.
Also, if it's true that you tend to gain weight every year you remain alive, then people who live a long time are more likely to be overweight. Not because they're heavy but because they're still alive. And people who die prematurely young are more likely to be skinny, not because they're malnourished, but because they simply didn't live long enough for a slow metabolism to pack on the pounds.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
BMI is like judging the value of a diamond on carat weight only. Much more goes into it than that.
Take for example, me. According to the typical categories, at 6'2", my normal range is 144lbs - 195lbs. Now, I'd love for you to look at a 6'2" guy that weight 144 and tell me he's normal (implicitly healthy) in weight. I have cancer patients that weigh more than that. And plenty of in shape guys that are 6'2" weigh well over 195. Science light...go America (and, apparently Canada).
BMI Categories:
Underweight = 18.5
Normal weight = 18.5-24.9
Overweight = 25-29.9
Obesity = BMI of 30 or greater
That's nonsense.
Everyone dies.
what you describe as the ideal curvaceous woman is a man's idea of an attractive woman. a woman's idea of an attractive woman is not the same as a man's idea of an attractive woman. for whatever reason, a lot of women are very self-loathing. and no, its not the usual bogeyman we try to blame for our own behavior, "the media", its some sort of innate psychological thing. a lot of women really think the body of a prepubescent boy is the ideal female appearance for some reason
if you take a woman with a banging bod, subject her to constant attention from all men, she can still go home and look in the mirror and find something to criticize. and she does: she think's she's too fat
the fashion industry has no real power. the fashion industry is given power by the people who buy clothes: women. and there's a lot of self-loathing in the female world. a shame
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The bigger the cushion, the sweeter the pushin'.
No wait... That was Spinal Tap.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
I'll forego using mod points on this thread to reply. I'll burn them off on some other topic.
It's surprising that there's not a single really overweight person commenting here, considering that 90% of overweight (by BMI) are simply fat.
I qualify by BMI (29.5, just shy of "obese") and by personal assessment (yes, I do look feel fat in this body right now). I was forced into a more sedentary life style 20 years ago and for many years I was obese by any standard, but I've shed more than 20 lbs from my heaviest weight. I am now reasonably fit, bicycling over 100 miles per week and self-training to do century ride in a month or so. I also do flat water kayaking, which is a good complement to the biking.
link to the NIH BMI Calculator used below.
Here's the thing: my personal ideal body weight will give me a BMI of 27.0 at the weight where I felt best before the accident that changed a lot of things in my life. This is still "overweight" by accepted standards. But to get to the top of the "normal" BMI range at 25.0, I would have drop to my weight when I graduated from high school, when I was a skinny guy with all the muscle tone of a boiled noodle. My long term (5 - 10 year) goal is to drop another 20 lbs to a BMI of 27, but I would have to drop 33 lb to get down to a BMI of 25, and that would definitely be unhealthy.
BMI can be sort of helpful to people of European and Asian descent in possibly refining their personal ideal self-image, but it isn't going to work so well with descendants of Native Americans, Polynesians, or Arctic peoples. But it isn't very accurate, and if it does not match up with a healthy person's ideal self-image, it should be ignored.
Will
It's surprising that there's not a single really overweight person commenting here, considering that 90% of overweight (by BMI) are simply fat.
Since you asked: I'm really overweight; BMI is bullshit. These two things are not related.
The idea that body shape is irrelevant in determining "ideal" weight is somewhat bizarre.
By the way, great job coming up with that 90% figure - it's fun to make shit up, isn't it?
sic transit gloria mundi
If they did, I didn't see it in the article. The problem is that sometimes the causation factor runs the other way - being unhealthy causes you to lose weight. If you have, say, AIDS, tuberculosis, or certain cancers, the disease both causes body wasting, and makes you die sooner. This can skew the statistics - yes, these people are skinny and died younger than they should have, but the skinniness didn't cause the early death - instead, both were caused by the underlying disease. It's possible that if you controlled for that, that underweight people wouldn't show such a tendency to die young.