Overweight

Being Overweight

Believe it or not.....you'll live longer!

Now doctors say it's good to be fat

A startling new study by medical researchers in the United States has caused consternation among public health professionals by suggesting that, contrary to conventional wisdom, being overweight might actually be beneficial for health.

8 November 2007

The study, published yesterday in the respected Journal of the American Medical Association, runs counter to almost all other advice to consumers by saying that carrying a little extra flab though not too much might help people to live longer.

Struggling dieters, used to being told that staying thin is the best prescription for longevity, are likely to be confused this morning if not heartily relieved. While being a bit overweight may indeed increase your chances of dying from diabetes and kidney disease conditions that are often linked with one another the same is not true for a host of other ailments including cancer and heart disease, the report suggests.

In fact, scanning the whole gamut of diseases that could curtail your life, being over weight is, on balance, a good thing. The bottom line, the scientists say, is that modestly overweight people demonstrate a lower death rate than their peers who are underweight, obese or most surprisingly normal weight.

The findings will be hard to dismiss. They are the result of analysis of decades of data by federal researchers at the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia. This is not a study from a fringe group of scientists or sponsored by a fast-food chain.

Being overweight, the report asserts in its conclusions, "was associated with significantly decreased all-cause mortality overall".

"The take-home message is that the relationship between fat and mortality is more complicated than we tend to think," said Katherine Flegal, the lead researcher. "It's not a cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all situation where excess weight just increases your mortality risk for any and all causes of death."

That the CDC has even published the report and thus threatened to muffle years of propaganda as to the health benefits of staying slender has enraged some medical experts.

"It's just rubbish," fumed Walter Willett, the professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health. "It's just ludicrous to say there is no increased risk of mortality from being overweight."

Not that the CDC results are an invitation to throw caution to the winds and take cream with everything. The scientists are careful to stress that the benefits they are describing are limited to those people who are merely overweight which generally means being no more than 30 pounds heavier than is recommended for your height and certainly do not carry over to those who fall into the category of obese.

Obesity has been declared one of the main threats to health in the US, including among children. Those considered obese, with a body mass index (BMI) of more than 30, continue to run a higher risk of death, the study says, from a variety of ailments, including numerous cancers and heart disease. It said that being underweight increases the risk of ailments not including heart disease or cancer.

The scientists at the CDC first hinted at the upside of being overweight a few years ago. Since then, however, they have expanded the base of their analysis, with data that includes mortality figures from 2004, the last year for which numbers were available, for no fewer than 2.3 million American adults.

Highlighting how a bit of bulge might help you, the scientists said that in 2004 there were 100,000 fewer deaths among the overweight in the US than would have been expected if they were all considered to be of normal weight. Put slightly differently, those Americans who were merely overweight were up to about 40 per cent less likely than normal-weight people to die from a whole range of diseases and risks including emphysema, pneumonia, Alzheimer's, injuries and various infections.

Aside from escaping diseases, tipping the scales a little further may also help people recover from serious surgery, injuries and infections, Dr Flegal suggested. Such patients may simply have deeper bodily reserves to draw on in times of medical crisis.

Not everyone in the medical profession was surprised or angry about the study. "What this tells us is the hazards have been very much exaggerated," said Steven Blair, a professor of exercise science and biostatistics at the University of South Carolina, who has long argued that the case for dietary restraint has been taken too far.

"I believe the data," added Elizabeth Barrett-Connor, a professor of family and preventive medicine at the University of California, San Diego, who believes that a BMI of 25 to 30 roughly the the so-called overweight range "may be optimal".

Critics, however, were quick to point out that the study was concerned with mortality data only and did not take account of the quality of life benefits of keeping your weight down. The study "is not about health and sickness", noted the obesity researcher Barry Popkin of the University of North Carolina.

The report "definitely won't be the last word", said Dr Michael Thun of the American Cancer Society, who pointed out, in a report released last week by the World Cancer Research Fund and the American Institute for Cancer Research, that staying slim was the main recommendation for avoiding cancer.

Others in the American medical community, while a little bemused, were withholding judgement. "This is a very puzzling disconnect," said Dr JoAnn Manson, the chief of preventive medicine at Harvard's Brigham and Women's Hospital.

The suggestion that a bit of extra weight may assist patients recovering from an infection or surgery was of no surprise to Dr Flegal. "You may also have more lean mass more bone and muscle," she said. "If you are in an adverse situation, that could be good for you."

In their conclusions, the authors of the study note: "Overweight... may be associated with improved survival during recovery from adverse conditions, such as infections or medical procedures, and with improved prognosis for some diseases. Such findings may be due to greater nutritional reserves or higher lean body mass associated with overweight."

Those of us mostly likely to benefit from a little bulge beneath the belt, the study adds, are between 25 and 59 years old, although there were also some advantages for people over 60.

Curvy women are cleverer too

It was already known that men find curvy women more attractive and that they live longer. Now research suggests that women with an hourglass figure are brighter and have cleverer children, too.

TimesOnline
Nov 2007

The study found that women with large hips and small waists are more intelligent than those with either apple-shaped or linear bodies.

The paper, to be published in the journal Evolution and Human Behaviour this week, suggests that such women give birth to more intelligent children - possibly a result of higher levels of omega3 fatty acids on the hips.

The researchers believe that the results offer a new explanation for why many men find curvy women more alluring. Nigella Lawson, the cookery presenter and Oxford University graduate, has one of Britains most famous hourglass figures, while Rachel Weisz, the curvy actress who won an Oscar for her role in The Constant Gardener, completed an English degree at Cambridge University while embarking on the first stages of her acting career.

In the research, scientists at the Universities of Pittsburgh and California, Santa Barbara, used data from a study of 16,000 women and girls, which collected details of their body measurements and their scores in cognitive tests. They found that those women with a greater difference between the waist and hips scored significantly higher on the tests, as did their children.

Such women are not necessarily skinny. What is important is that their waist should be smaller than their hips, with the ideal ratio being between 0.6 and 0.7.

The researchers suggest that the fat around fuller hips and thighs holds higher levels of omega3 fatty acids which are essential for the growth of the brain during pregnancy. Fat around the waist may have higher levels of omega6 fatty acids, which are less suited to brain growth.

Waist fat can also be a contributory factor in diabetes and heart disease. Thinner or linear-shaped women would simply lack enough of either type of fat.

Although these theories await confirmation, Paula Hall, a sexual and relationship psychologist with Relate, said: Having research that proves you can be sexy and intelligent is really positive. It shows that curvy women may be better at things other than raising children and doing cooking and housework.

The research may also explain why children born to teenage mothers do worse in cognitive tests: their mothers may have had insufficient stores of the best fatty acids.

The cognitive development of their children is reduced, and their own cognitive development is impaired compared with those mothers with a later first birth, say the researchers.

The study noted, however, that children born to teenage girls with traditional hourglass figures seemed to be protected from this phenomenon and did better in tests.

A number of scientific studies have shown that men are hard-wired to find women with a greater waist-hip differential the most attractive. No one has yet been able to explain this, although theories include enhanced fertility, better childbearing abilities and longer life expectancy.

Dr Harry Witchel, a senior lecturer in physiology at the Brighton and Sussex Medical School and a body language expert on the television programme Big Brother, said: Until this point the only thing we have accepted is that they [curvy women] are at an advantage in contemporary western society. What these people are saying is that they also have an advantage biologically.