Overweight = unhealthy




From Heartwire:

August 23, 2006 - Two studies appearing in the August 22 Early Release and
August 24 print issue of The New England Journal of Medicine suggest that
even small increases in body mass index (BMI) can increase risk for
mortality. The findings are published recently following a review in the
Lancet, reported by heartwire, that showed having a slightly higher BMI
might actually confer a survival benefit, although with the caveat that this
might merely reflect the inadequacy of BMI in differentiating between fat
and muscle.

In one study, Kenneth F. Adams, MD, from the Nutritional Epidemiology
Branch, National Institutes of Health, in Bethesda, Maryland, looked at BMI
and death in more than half a million US men and women from the National
Institutes of Health-AARP cohort who was between the ages of 50 and 71 years
at study enrollment. During 10 years of follow-up, more than 61,000
participants died. When stratified by BMI, death rates were highest in the
highest and lowest categories of BMI, at all age groups, with risk for death
substantially increased in people with BMIs higher than 30 kg/m2. In further
analyses, however, after controlling for health status and smoking, a higher
risk for death was associated with being overweight, as well as being obese.
In an analysis that looked specifically at "mid-life" (aged 50 - 55 years),
men and women who had never smoked, being overweight was associated with a
20% to 40% increased risk for death. While obesity has long been believed to
increase mortality, the risk for lesser degrees of excess weight has been
questioned: this study should help dispel some of that uncertainty,
researchers say.

"The main results of our study are that people who are overweight have a
moderately increased risk of premature death, and people who are obese have
a greatly increased risk of death, and those results are based particularly
on the analysis we conducted when we looked at people's weight at mid-life,"
senior author on the study, Michael F. Leitzmann, MD, from the Nutritional
Epidemiology Branch, National Institutes of Health, told heartwire.


.

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