Chubby Could Be the New Healthy

Being a bit overweight doesn't raise your risk of dying from cancer or heart disease, and could actually protect you from some infections, say government researchers.

The findings, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and based on 2004 mortality stats for 2.3 million U.S. adults, are the latest pieces in the confusing scientific puzzle of body, weight and health.

Here they are in a (fatty acid-rich) nutshell: being obese still raises your risks for everything from heart disease to diabetes to kidney disease to a whole host of cancers. It's bad for you. But for adults, being merely overweight -- having a body mass index between 25 and 30
-- might be okay. It doesn't up the risk of dying from heart disease or cancer, and is actually associated with lower rates of death from emphysema, various infections and pneumonia.

However, the study, like any large-scale piece of number crunching, is far from perfect. As American Heart Association spokesman Robert Eckel told the Associated Press,

... the results may be misleading. For example, diabetes and heart disease often occur together and both often afflict overweight people.
So when diabetes is listed as a cause of death, heart disease could have contributed, he said.

Eckel also said the study results might reflect aggressive efforts to treat high blood pressure and cholesterol or other conditions that can lead to fatal heart attacks. Those conditions often occur in overweight people and can be costly and debilitating even if they aren't always deadly, he said.

That gets at a very important caveat here: the study looked at death rates, not health or quality of life. So don't cancel your gym membership and stock up on cheesecake just yet. But if you're a bit overweight, it's not the end of the world.

Extra Weight Won't Raise Death Risk [Associated Press]

Cause-Specific Excess Deaths Associated With Underweight, Overweight, and Obesity [JAMA]
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Image: Michael Titus
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See Also:

• Do-It-Yourself Tests for Racism, Homophobia, Ageism and Anti-Obesity Bias