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FAT AND FIT: The new counter-intuitive findings may encourage people to focus on healthy eating and exercise instead of obsessing about carrying a little extra weight. -- PHOTO: REUTERS
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WASHINGTON - BEING overweight boosts the risk of dying from diabetes or kidney disease, but carrying a few extra kilos appears to protect against other causes of death, US researchers have found.
The counter-intuitive findings, based on a detailed analysis of decades of government data on more than 39,000 Americans, suggest that being overweight does carry risks, but the dangers may be less dire than experts believe.
'It is not a cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all situation where excess weight just increases your mortality risk for any and all causes of death,' said Dr Katherine Flegal, a research scientist at the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, who led the study. The findings were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association on Tuesday.
In the research, Dr Flegal's team used widely accepted federal definitions of 'overweight' and 'obesity' based on body mass index (BMI).
BMI is a measure of body fat based on height and weight. A BMI of between 25 and 30 classifies someone as overweight and above 30 as obese. The study analysed the BMI of people who died from various diseases.
In many cases, the risks of death were substantial for obese people - those with a BMI of at least 30. Specifically, obesity raised the risk of death from heart disease, diabetes, kidney disease and several cancers previously linked with excess weight, including breast, colon and pancreatic cancer.
But being merely overweight did not increase the risk of dying from heart disease or any kind of cancer.
Also surprising was that overweight people were up to 40 per cent less likely than normal-weight people to die from several other causes including emphysema, tuberculosis, pneumonia, injuries and various infections.
The age group that seemed to benefit most from a little extra padding were people aged 25 to 59; older overweight people had reduced risks for these diseases too.
The findings have drawn mixed reactions.
Dr Robert Eckel, a spokesman for the American Heart Association, argued that 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 to it, he said.
Others, like Dr Steven Blair, welcomed the study. 'What this tells us is the hazards have been very much exaggerated,' said Dr Blair, a professor of exercise science, epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of South Carolina.
He said people should focus on healthy eating and exercise and stop obsessing about carrying a few extra kilos.
He said his hefty grandmother used to justify her extra padding by saying: 'That way I have protection in case I get sick.' Maybe there is something to that.
ASSOCIATED PRESS, WASHINGTON POST
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