"Study tips scales the other way, overweight people live longer"

[panzerfaust]

http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/wellbeing/study-tips-scales-the-other-way-overweight-people-live-longer-20090618-cm13.html

A study by the Japanese Health, Labour and Welfare Ministry has found that people who are overweight at the age of 40 live longer on average than people with other physiques.

The study showed that thin people had the shortest life expectancy, on average dying six or seven years earlier than overweight people.

Researchers studied the health of about 50,000 people aged 40 or older over a 12-year period. They looked at the past physiques of the participants and how long they lived past the age of 40, and grouped them according to their body mass index (BMI), an indicator of how fat a person is.

And, it is not even April Fool's Day!

It would be of interest to know more details of the quoted study, as it also found that "...the fatter a person is, the greater their medical expenses", and, of course, the reported findings are at variance with the vast majority of other studies published over many decades.

Interesting.

[Hannah Bell]

1. body of research says mild overweight = longer life expectancy.

it's not a new finding.

the very thin & very fat die sooner, on average.

[and-justice-for-all]

3. "the very thin & very fat die sooner, on average." indeed...nt

[ThomWV]

11. and if you really want to see high rates of death look at the very slow.

[and-justice-for-all]

2. I just can not see that being accurate...sorry...

There are in fact health issues with being overweight.

[dkf]

4. I'm not sure if we can extrapolate a study on Japanese to other

populations.

For one thing, the diet is different, more fish and not as much beef.

[dweller]

5. to this day, the elderliest people i've seen

were all thin ...

:shrug:


dp

[dorkulon]

6. Right--look around and try to find a fat 80-year-old.

I'm not buying it.

[Mari333]

7. my mom is a fat 84 yr old

I dont know why, tho.

[Scout]

14. my mom is a fat 83 year old n/t

[eilen]

8. they just look younger.

thin 80 year olds look older.

I have seen many in their 80's who are 20-30 or more lbs overweight. I am always surprised they are in their 80's. I'm a nurse-- in community health so I see many. A good number have congestive heart failure and diabetes and/or COPD. The thin ones get the same disease are more at risk as they have no appetite and don't eat enough to keep their sugars up.

It's hard for a COPD'r to exercise when they can't breathe. On the other hand, over time they lose weight expending more energy to breathe so they lose but the disease concurrently decreases lung capacity putting strain on the heart.

[Another Bill C.]

9. My mother was overweight

through most of her 70s. She started losing it as she approached 80 and only weighed 90 lbs. when she died at 89.

[ThomWV]

10. When they speak of 'overweight' in Japan is the context the same as in the US

I have been to Japan a number of times and for the life of me I do not recall that the majority of the people were obese - like it is here. So I suspect that when they speak about someone being overweight at 40 them mean by a few pounds (kilos) not a hundred or more pounds, which is so very common here. Hell, I've seen 12-year-old children who were 100 pounds over weight walking down the street here and you simply never see anything like that in Japan.

So while they may be saying overweight but it may very well be by such a small fraction that it would go unnoticed in our lard-ass society.

[L0oniX]

12. LOL ...yea right ...thats why everyone in rest homes are fat.

[muriel_volestrangler]

13. I wonder if Japan's history may feed into this too

If you're looking at the eventual age of death of Japanese people, then you're looking mostly at people young in the time during or just after WW2. Being slightly overweight by 40 may have been an indication of having access to good food as a child or young adult at a time when many in that country didn't. So this may be an indication that bad nutrition when young is not a good thing.

Or they may have allowed for that in some way. :shrug:

[Vinca]

15. I had a wealthy neighbor woman who was in her 80's and probably

weighed about 80 lbs. She was a walking skeleton and completely miserable, but she had bought into the "fear of fat" and it never crossed her lips. I would see her at the store buying nonfat yogurt, nonfat milk and nonfat ice cream. She also bragged about having put 40,000 miles on her exercise bike. I wanted to yell at this woman to enjoy life for a second . . . laugh . . . eat a brownie. She ended up in a nursing home after refusing to eat post-surgery. I always thought it was a suicide. At least her husband gets to eat now. If given the choice, I'd rather be happy and a little fat whether I die early or late.