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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.'"
Welcome to science, things change based on new information.
We get a hypothesis, test it, and if it tests out we have a generally accepted theory. That theory is subject to change, someone reads its comes up with a new hypothesis and runs some more tests.
The problem is that folks are making life-changing decisions based on these theories. Doctors yell at us. TV "educates" us about what is acceptable. Then, something new comes along and says 'forget all that stuff, do this instead'. Doesn't take long before folks tune it out altogether.
For me, it was salt. Loved it. The more the better. Then I read about how bad it is for your heart. So I cut it out dramatically. Then a couple years later, I read about how it isn't very bad at all, unless you already have a heart condition, or family history. So basically I got duped into giving up something I enjoyed. Makes me more skeptical about the next scientific finding about my diet.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
I can see that the intent of the article will lead to immense amounts of false justification. See, the majority of people that are overweight usually arrive at that state from extended periods of poor eating habits (or lots of drinking), inactivity or a combination of both.
It also appears that both articles base their study largely on BMI, which is well-known for being an outdated indicator of health in relation to weight. It works for those that are not athletic or abnormal, but is unreliable for anyone in those two categories. What might have been a better criterion for this study was body fat, which correlates much better to a person's weight.
Intuitively, I agree with the point made here. From the little that I know about nutrition, I've read that having some extra weight (apart from lean body weight and the necessary amount of body fat) helps the body function much better in everyday situations. Should this reach mass media, I'm almost positive that this, amongst other things, will be the excuse for those that don't wish to consider improving their health and lifestyle choices.
Oh well. Mental masturbation never fails to relieve.
As long as you had food, water, and pr0n you could live forever on your computer chair.
Yeah, if you like bedsores on your ass!
;)
There aren't enough details to decide but I could understand how being slightly overweight could be beneficial to women in particular. There's a reason why women like these and this were considered the most attractive in antiquity. Chubby is coming back in style
Even today many guys like me prefer chubby women - they're softer to cuddle with, they tend to have bigger and more plump breasts, they're curvature is accentuated and their plumpness makes them look "cuter", they're better-equipped to have healthy babies, and (in my experience) they have more orgasms. The homos out there are aware of the popularity of "bears".
I'm glad that the starving, anorexic "heroin-chic" fad is going out the door. One can be fit and comfortable without having to go hungry or be unattractively obese. Vanity, like eating, is unattractive in excess.
Body fat calculators are free, and correlate body weight to body type significantly better than BMI does.
Then I read about how bad it is for your heart. So I cut it out dramatically. Then a couple years later, I read about how it isn't very bad at all...
In that case the problem isn't really the science, the problem is panic and making drastic decisions based on limited information.
The overall best advice for health has been moderation, its been that way for centuries:
- don't do too much hard work or you'll burn out and get injured
- don't sit around and do nothing, you need to move and use your body
- don't eat a lot of one thing, variety is good
- recognize things with negative effects and limit their use, if you ingest something that you react badly to, don't ingest it. More on this later
- remember that your body changes gradually. Pushing it too hard too fast, even in a healthy direction, is bad
- its YOUR body you have to take responsibility for it and understand what you do to it. If you don't entirely understand advice, ask more questions and do a bit of research and find out for yourself.
Identifying things with negative effects is what really gets people. Smoking is bad, your body coughing and having nic fits is a sign of distress. Having a few drinks and relaxing and laughing is good, being hungover is your body telling you "that was dumb, we're OK now but don't do it again".
Overeating and being dog tired isn't normal. Its OK once in a while, but usually you should be able to eat. Take a few minutes to let it all settle down, then have energy to go do stuff.
I guess the overall answer is to take unsolicited advice or to take drastic all-or-nothing actions with a GRAIN OF SALT (long setup on that one). Anyone suggesting that you radically alter your life in a short time span, is either taking urgent action to keep you from dying or full of shit and trying to gain power over you. I have a good relationship with my doctor and put him in the first category and most others in the latter. Even then, I make sure that the actions my doctor advises are backed up not just by the latest research, but solid foundations and long term common sense.
And how do you know which is which? The BMI is not meant to be used in the fashion that you're suggesting, percent body fat is. While percent body fat isn't the end all be all, it is a fair measure, and it does a pretty damn fine job of it too.
Unfortunately neither one does a good job of separating visceral fat from subcutaneous fat, and that's more important than being a bit chubby. I do carry a fair bit of fat, but very little of it is visceral, and I'm still within about 5lbs of what's ideal for a person of my build.
The BMI demanded weight of about 170 would definitely be detrimental to my health. BTW, last time I weighed myself I was roughly 189 and 5' 10.5, I don't feel well when I have gotten down under 180.
Crossfit type workouts can give a good measure of several metrics, but it isn't exactly easy to quantify.
I think what you refer to in your example is less a case of measuring fitness than it is measuring performance in some extremely specialized circumstances where the difference between first and last isn't all that much. Lance Armstrong wasn't a great runner despite being a great cyclist, but he is probably far better than most other non-runners. Just like Robbie McEwen can't match Armstrong in the Alps but would crush him in the last 100 meters of the flats.
When I was in the USMC we did a lot of 'fitness' stuff and everyone was more or less in pretty good shape. When I went to sniper school there were some physical requirements that were different and others that were under more scrutiny. That made obvious what were previously undetectable differences. Two guys could finish a run side by side but one of them would be so taxed he couldn't steady his rifle, despite both having first class PT scores. After I was discharged I worked more on strength than anything else and when I got back into competitive shooting I immediately noticed the difference. Hard to say which constitutes 'fitter', benching 325 or being able to march all day with a full pack and a 16 lb rifle.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
When your research indicated that overweight people live longer, what it's really telling you is that your definition of "overweight" is broken. And BMI is, indeed, seriously broken, since it does not take in to account age, build, or even sex. BMI says that a man and a woman of the same height should be the same weight. Which is medically dangerous quackery.
The BMI formula was created by a mathematician, not a doctor or someone with medical training. It was pushed as a medical standard by phamracuetical companies that have invested heavily in weight loss drugs. When they found that the 1985 standards for obesity (~27.5) wasn't selling enough weight loss prescriptions, they pushed to lower the threshold to 25 instead.
The reason there are more overweight Americans in the last ten years is that the definition of overweight was changed in 1998. You'll never see a news article that says "Americans used to average ### pounds in weight, and now they average ###+n pounds, or even that the average BMI used to be ## and is now ##+n. All you'll ever see is "there are more overweight americans, with no explanation of how this is determined.
Because, dammit! those pharmaceutical execs have boat payments to make!
Not so fast. As a guy who has married into a Canadian family (hailing from Vancouver, to be specific), I have had quite a re-education as to how bad the Canadian Health Care system is. I, like many other Americans, bought into the idea of how great Canada's Health Care System was, but I have been taught that this is absolutely not the case. I've learned this from many family members and friends. I've read many articles and stories like this one that paint a very different picture than the rosy one I had heard about before.