News out of the journal Obesity (I buy it for the photos), shows that being moderately overweight actually improves your odds of not dying early.
Compared with people in the “normal” range of the BMI — the misused and misguided body mass index, which charts your height and weight and determines if you are “normal”, overweight or underweight — people who were moderately overweight were 17 percent less likely to die than people in the normal range.
This is really more of a condemnation of the BMI than it is anything else. One of the study’s primary authors and a researcher at the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research in Oregon, David Feeny, said: “I think this is part of an accumulation of evidence that indicates that organizations like Health Canada”¦ should rethink the evidence on their classification of BMI categories.”
According to the Globe and Mail:
Feeny speculates that overweight people might survive longer because their extra heft gives them more resilience when they become old or ill. Since people lose fat faster than muscle, having that bit of extra weight might help in preventing frailty.
No word yet on how much beer you have to drink to live longer. But”¦ fingers crossed!
Any word on the health benefits of blender drinks, or Facebooking while waiting to cross the border?
Both, apparently, are very good for you.
Let’s hope they are never asked to run for their lives.