An article in yesterday's Independent by Dr Malcolm Kendrick, a GP and medical researcher, from his book "Doctoring Data:How to Sort Out Medical Advice from Medical Nonsense (Columbus) comprehensively debunks the prevailing norm that being overweight is bad for your health.
He defines overweight as having a BMI of between 25 and 30 and cites Wikipedia on the dangers of being overweight. It states that"The generally accepted view is that being overweight causes similar health problems to obesity, but to a lesser degree. Adams et al estimated that the risk of death increases by 20 to 40 per cent among overweight people, and the Framingham heart study found that overweight at age 40 reduced life expectancy by three years."
Similarly journals such as the Journal of the American Medical Association had the following headline "Excess deaths associated with underweight, overweight and obesity" which suggests overweight is bad for you. If you look more closely at the paper you can find these words "Overweight was not associated with excess mortality." Perhaps more extraordinarily what the researchers actually found was that those who were overweight lived the longest; they lived longer than those of normal weight.
Another study done in Canada in 2010 concluded "Our results are similar to those from other studies,confirming that underweight and obesity class II+ (BMI + 35 are clear risk factors for mortality, and showing that when compared to the acceptable BMI category, overweight appears to be protective of mortality" He comments that he loves the way they couldn't bring themselves to say "normal" BMI.
He also cites a 2009 German study by a group which did a painstaking meta analysis of all studies on overweight and obesity that they could find. He says that as with most other researchers. they found that being overweight was good for you. They did not phrase it that way and said "the prevailing notion that overweight increases morbitidy and mortality, as compared to so called normal weight, is in need of further specification."
As for those with a BMI of more than 30, those who are truly obese,he says the health danger are greatly over estimated because of what is called clumping whereby the obese category covers everybody with a BMI in excess of 30 including those with a BMI of 50,. Thus it tells you absolutely nothing about the health problems of a BMI of 31. He also says that other studies where obesity was sub divided those with a BMI between 30 and 35 lived longer than those of normal weight.
Just to conclude by saying I have absolutely no vested interest in this as I have never had any weight problems, but I hope others will find this as interesting as I did and perhaps of comfort to some.
He defines overweight as having a BMI of between 25 and 30 and cites Wikipedia on the dangers of being overweight. It states that"The generally accepted view is that being overweight causes similar health problems to obesity, but to a lesser degree. Adams et al estimated that the risk of death increases by 20 to 40 per cent among overweight people, and the Framingham heart study found that overweight at age 40 reduced life expectancy by three years."
Similarly journals such as the Journal of the American Medical Association had the following headline "Excess deaths associated with underweight, overweight and obesity" which suggests overweight is bad for you. If you look more closely at the paper you can find these words "Overweight was not associated with excess mortality." Perhaps more extraordinarily what the researchers actually found was that those who were overweight lived the longest; they lived longer than those of normal weight.
Another study done in Canada in 2010 concluded "Our results are similar to those from other studies,confirming that underweight and obesity class II+ (BMI + 35 are clear risk factors for mortality, and showing that when compared to the acceptable BMI category, overweight appears to be protective of mortality" He comments that he loves the way they couldn't bring themselves to say "normal" BMI.
He also cites a 2009 German study by a group which did a painstaking meta analysis of all studies on overweight and obesity that they could find. He says that as with most other researchers. they found that being overweight was good for you. They did not phrase it that way and said "the prevailing notion that overweight increases morbitidy and mortality, as compared to so called normal weight, is in need of further specification."
As for those with a BMI of more than 30, those who are truly obese,he says the health danger are greatly over estimated because of what is called clumping whereby the obese category covers everybody with a BMI in excess of 30 including those with a BMI of 50,. Thus it tells you absolutely nothing about the health problems of a BMI of 31. He also says that other studies where obesity was sub divided those with a BMI between 30 and 35 lived longer than those of normal weight.
Just to conclude by saying I have absolutely no vested interest in this as I have never had any weight problems, but I hope others will find this as interesting as I did and perhaps of comfort to some.
