Research: A Little Extra Fat May Help You Live Longer
Being a little overweight may tip the odds in favor of living a long life, according to a new study. Researchers say there may be some benefit to having a little extra body fat.
This isn’t the first time researchers have raised questions about the link between body weight and how long someone will live. While there’s no debate that being severely obese will raise the risk of all kinds of illnesses and even cut some lives short, it’s less clear what happens to people who are less overweight.
When Katherine Flegal of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention set out to answer this question, she wanted to include as many people as possible in her study — from as many places around the world as she could find.
“We searched all the literature, thousands of articles, found almost 100 articles with 3 million people, that really addressed this question head on,” Flegal says.
And she concludes that being overweight is actually associated with a lower risk of death. It’s certainly not dramatic, but about a 6 percent decreased risk.
“It’s statistically significant,” Flegal says.
So who are we talking about here? A lot more people than you might think. About one-third of all Americans fall into this category of overweight. And Flegal found that even among those who are technically, slightly obese, there was no increased risk of death.
At a time when we’re bombarded with weight loss messages, Flegal says it is not popular to suggest that heavier people may live longer. In fact a few years back, when she published a paper that came to a similar conclusion, her findings were attacked.
“Our article got called rubbish and ludicrous,” Flegal says. “So it really opens you to lots of criticism. I discovered much to my sorrow that this is kind of a flashpoint for people.”
One of the experts who takes issue with Flegal’s conclusions is Walter Willett of the Harvard School of Public Health. He’s read her new paper and says he’s not buying it.
“This study is really a pile of rubbish and no one should waste their time reading it,” he says.
Willett says it’s not helpful to look simply at how peoples BMIs, body mass index, influence their risk of death — as this paper did without knowing something about people’s health or fitness. Some people are thin because they’re ill, so of course they’re at higher risk of dying. The study doesn’t tease this apart.
Also, he says the analysis does not address the bigger, more important issues of quality of life. If an overweight person does live longer — is he or she living with chronic diseases?
“We have a huge amount of other literature showing that people who gain weight or are overweight, have increased risk of diabetes, heart disease, stroke, many cancers and many other conditions,” Willett says.
For those of you who want to know whether your body weight is a problem, Willett says rather than comparing your BMI to those around you, think about what you weighed when you were 20 years old.
“For most people, our ideal weight, if we weren’t seriously overweight at age 20, is about what we weighed then,” Willett says. That’s why weight change is a good number to keep an eye on because it can be an early warning sign,” that you’re on the path to more weight gain.
Not everyone’s convinced the new paper is rubbish. Dr. Steven Hymsfield of the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, La., says there are a couple of scenarios in which extra body weight might help people live longer.
“If you fall and you fall on vulnerable bone, like the hip, having a little extra fat there might protect you from hip fracture,” Hymsfield says.
Or he says, if an illness leaves you unable to eat, extra body fat could be useful.
Hymsfield acknowledges this is just speculation. He says while this paper won’t end the debate over whether a little extra body fat could be a good thing, it does show that the relationship between weight and health may be more complicated than just a simple calculation.
Article source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/01/02/168437030/research-a-little-extra-fat-may-help-you-live-longer
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Categories: Fat Loss Diary Tags: Baton Rouge, BMI, Walter Willett
Research: A Little Extra Fat May Help You Live Longer
Being a little overweight may tip the odds in favor of living a long life, according to a new study. Researchers say there may be some benefit to having a little extra body fat.
This isn’t the first time researchers have raised questions about the link between body weight and how long someone will live. While there’s no debate that being severely obese will raise the risk of all kinds of illnesses and even cut some lives short, it’s less clear what happens to people who are less overweight.
When Katherine Flegal of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention set out to answer this question, she wanted to include as many people as possible in her study — from as many places around the world as she could find.
“We searched all the literature, thousands of articles, found almost 100 articles with 3 million people, that really addressed this question head on,” Flegal says.
And she concludes that being overweight is actually associated with a lower risk of death. It’s certainly not dramatic, but about a 6 percent decreased risk.
“It’s statistically significant,” Flegal says.
So who are we talking about here? A lot more people than you might think. About one-third of all Americans fall into this category of overweight. And Flegal found that even among those who are technically, slightly obese, there was no increased risk of death.
At a time when we’re bombarded with weight loss messages, Flegal says it is not popular to suggest that heavier people may live longer. In fact a few years back, when she published a paper that came to a similar conclusion, her findings were attacked.
“Our article got called rubbish and ludicrous,” Flegal says. “So it really opens you to lots of criticism. I discovered much to my sorrow that this is kind of a flashpoint for people.”
One of the experts who takes issue with Flegal’s conclusions is Walter Willett of the Harvard School of Public Health. He’s read her new paper and says he’s not buying it.
“This study is really a pile of rubbish and no one should waste their time reading it,” he says.
Willett says it’s not helpful to look simply at how peoples BMIs, body mass index, influence their risk of death — as this paper did without knowing something about people’s health or fitness. Some people are thin because they’re ill, so of course they’re at higher risk of dying. The study doesn’t tease this apart.
Also, he says the analysis does not address the bigger, more important issues of quality of life. If an overweight person does live longer — is he or she living with chronic diseases?
“We have a huge amount of other literature showing that people who gain weight or are overweight, have increased risk of diabetes, heart disease, stroke, many cancers and many other conditions,” Willett says.
For those of you who want to know whether your body weight is a problem, Willett says rather than comparing your BMI to those around you, think about what you weighed when you were 20 years old.
“For most people, our ideal weight, if we weren’t seriously overweight at age 20, is about what we weighed then,” Willett says. That’s why weight change is a good number to keep an eye on because it can be an early warning sign,” that you’re on the path to more weight gain.
Not everyone’s convinced the new paper is rubbish. Dr. Steven Hymsfield of the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, La., says there are a couple of scenarios in which extra body weight might help people live longer.
“If you fall and you fall on vulnerable bone, like the hip, having a little extra fat there might protect you from hip fracture,” Hymsfield says.
Or he says, if an illness leaves you unable to eat, extra body fat could be useful.
Hymsfield acknowledges this is just speculation. He says while this paper won’t end the debate over whether a little extra body fat could be a good thing, it does show that the relationship between weight and health may be more complicated than just a simple calculation.
Article source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/01/02/168437030/research-a-little-extra-fat-may-help-you-live-longer?ft=1&f=1001
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Categories: Fat Loss Diary Tags: Baton Rouge, BMI, Walter Willett
TV in bedrooms increases risk of overweight kids
Hey, moms, here’s yet another way to feel terrible about your parenting! Too much boob tube in the bedroom is likely to make your kids fat, a new study says.
Kids between the ages of 5 and 8 who have televisions in their bedrooms are
more likely to have thicker waists and more fat mass, and those who watched more than five hours of programming a day were 2.5 times more likely to have fat around their internal organs, according to TODAY Moms.
This study can be added to the pile of research that says watching TV is bad for kids. We get it—too much TV rots your brain and your body. But as a mom who works at home and sometimes has to deal with sick kids, half-days and school breaks, I definitely use the television as a distraction for my kids when I need to put my nose to the grindstone.
Granted, a TV in your kid’s bedroom takes things to a whole new level. This latest study, out of Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, La., seems to indicate a link to specific physiological symptoms, mainly larger waists, more fat in the bloodstream, more risk of heart disease and more belly fat, all of which are precursors to major health problems like diabetes.
However, the research does not directly prove a link between the idiot box and health problems. It certainly adds to the debate about kids and TVs, and the American Academy of Pediatrics does recommend limiting your child’s viewing to two hours a day.
I’ll be honest, putting a TV in your kid’s bedroom might make me feel a wee bit judgmental, but then again, I let my oldest watch streaming video on our family’s iPad in her room, so is that any better than an actual television. Probably not. Guess I’d better turn that hairy eyeball on myself.
Would you put a TV in your child’s bedroom? Why or why not?
Photo: woodleywonderworks, Flickr
Article source: http://blogs.babycenter.com/mom_stories/12112012kids-tv-health/
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Categories: Fat Loss Diary Tags: Baton Rouge, TV
Loading up on sweet treats before the race, it can only be the Fat Boy 5K
Baton Rouge — Staying true to the moniker, racers in Saturday’s Fat Boy 5K lined up to receive sugary treats like donuts, moon pies and chocolate milk, embracing their own inner fat boy.
It’s worth mentioning that runners were encouraged to consume the goodies before the race actually kicked off at 8:30 in the morning.
The field of 1,000 racers included the young and the old, a man in a banana suit and another that completed the entire 3.1-mile course through a residential neighborhood on a unicycle.
The honorary fat boys were lucky just to get a chance to slap the pavement with their running shoes. The 1,000 slots sold out quickly after registration opened up — something that’s happened with regularity in recent years.
Because the race winds through the twisting residential streets around Highland elementary school, it is capped at 1,000 entrants to keep it from being too intrusive on the people living in the area.
The course offers a unique perspective for a Southeast Louisiana runner, as it features several different changes in elevation, including a challenging hill less than a quarter mile from the finish line.
In spite of the hills, the course still produced some fast times. Adam Hogewind, a 28-year-old Baton Rouge resident, won the race with a 16:31 time — a 6:17 per-mile clip. 30-year-old Lindsey Manda was the top female finisher, with a 19:28 finish.
The only audible gripe from any of the racers was with the race timing system. While finishers’ times were recorded with a chip system at the finish line, the clock started for each runner at the starting gun — meaning some were already several seconds into the race by the time they crossed the start.
Fat Boy Running Club representatives littered the course, offering good-natured ribbing in the direction of some runners. It was usually something like, “Get moving, fat boy.”
The runners didn’t seem to mind, however, as the entire event was geared toward celebrating the spirit of competition no matter the shape or size of the runner.
Before the race, larger runners could hop on a scale to register as a Clydesdale (200-230 pounds), a Super Clydesdale (231-260 pounds) or an Ultra Clydesdale (260 and over). The winners in each class were awarded a large chocolate rabbit at the conclusion of the race.
But runners didn’t have to be in the higher weight classes to embody the fat boy spirit. Foot long sausages and beer joined the donuts and moon pies as part of the post-race fare.
Runners who stayed for the award ceremony were also able to catch packs of frozen sausages that race director Ben Cherbonnier hurled into the crowd in what he called the, “annual sausage toss.”
Runners who missed out on running the Fat Boy in Baton Rouge can still get their chance to run it in 2012. Because of its burgeoning popularity, the race has branched out to three different locations.
New Orleans is hosting its second annual Fat Boy 5K on Sunday, May 27, but registration is still closed for the race.
The first Fat Boy was held in Las Vegas in February, after a former Baton Rouge resident asked Cherbonnier if he could expand its territory westward.
Article source: http://www.nola.com/running/index.ssf/2012/04/loading_up_on_sweet_treats_bef.html
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Categories: Fat Loss Diary Tags: Baton Rouge, Ben Cherbonnier, Fat Boy, New Orleans