{"id":2843,"date":"2008-08-19T11:09:04","date_gmt":"2008-08-19T11:09:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2008\/08\/19\/fit-trumps-fat\/"},"modified":"2008-08-19T11:09:04","modified_gmt":"2008-08-19T11:09:04","slug":"fit-trumps-fat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2008\/08\/19\/fit-trumps-fat\/","title":{"rendered":"Fit Trumps Fat"},"content":{"rendered":"

The New York Times<\/cite> today has an article about obesity, showcasing new studies that find weight isn’t that important<\/a> as an indicator of health:<\/p>\n

\n

Despite concerns about an obesity epidemic, there is growing evidence that our obsession about weight as a primary measure of health may be misguided. <\/p>\n

Last week a report in The Archives of Internal Medicine compared weight and cardiovascular risk factors among a representative sample of more than 5,400 adults. The data suggest that half of overweight people and one-third of obese people are “metabolically healthy.” That means that despite their excess pounds, many overweight and obese adults have healthy levels of “good” cholesterol, blood pressure, blood glucose and other risks for heart disease.<\/p>\n

At the same time, about one out of four slim people — those who fall into the “healthy” weight range — actually have at least two cardiovascular risk factors typically associated with obesity, the study showed.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

They go on to say that the factor most strongly correlated with overall health is not the ever-popular Body Mass Index, but rather fitness:<\/p>\n

\n

Those with the lowest level of fitness, as measured on treadmill tests, were four times as likely to die during the 12-year study than those with the highest level of fitness. Even those who had just a minimal level of fitness had half the risk of dying compared with those who were least fit.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This will not come as a surprise to anyone who has ever put the stats for their favorite pro athlete into a BMI calculator<\/a> (you want to tell Michael Strahan<\/a> he’s obese?), but it’s nice to see it holds more widely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The New York Times today has an article about obesity, showcasing new studies that find weight isn’t that important as an indicator of health: Despite concerns about an obesity epidemic, there is growing evidence that our obsession about weight as a primary measure of health may be misguided. Last week a report in The Archives… Continue reading Fit Trumps Fat<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-medicine","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2843\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}