I figured out how to cure the "Obesity Epidemic"

This study has nothing to do with people who exercise regularly but only with BMI. This is simply a quantitative analysis of BMI and there is no evidence to suggest that runners specifically, or really any other exercising population (which are known to have lower mortality), have a higher mortality due to low BMI. I would like to see data on the runners in this study to see what is actually true versus the qualitative accusations you presume.

Perhaps I should clarify. Given one anorexic person and one obese person, the anorexic person has a higher probablitiy of heart failure. Obviously, there are currently more obese Americans than there are anorexic Americans. But cases of Anorexia are increasing at a more rapid rate than are those of obesity. Anorexia is a big enough problem that it needs to be seriously addressed, but it is often ignored because so many people are focued on obesity as a problem.

And, btw, someone earlier posted about linking health care premiums to BMI. That is one of the worst potential solutions I've ever heard to deal with obesity. Using BMI as the gague of weight-status, someone like Marshall Faulk would be considered overweight and nearly obease. I bring this up because most studies use BMI to ascertain whether or not someone is obese, and this is a very poor gague of obesity.

so...

hmmm wrote:

This study has nothing to do with people who exercise regularly but only with BMI. This is simply a quantitative analysis of BMI and there is no evidence to suggest that runners specifically, or really any other exercising population (which are known to have lower mortality), have a higher mortality due to low BMI. I would like to see data on the runners in this study to see what is actually true versus the qualitative accusations you presume.

correct! of course it only has to do with BMI. but thats what a lot of the posts have been suggesting - that fat people pay more, based on BMI, because they have higher risks.

face it, while runners may not have increased CVD risks, they do have other health risks that might be evaluated by an insurance company.

if we want to tax, or charge rates, to people based on a segment of their life, be prepared to also have YOUR life examined, and charged accordingly. you may think you do everything well, and lead a heathly life, but you might actually be at risk!

and yes, distance runners are lumped into the category of people with low BMI. miles and miles said he is 6'1", 155 lbs. - by my rough calculations that puts his BMI @ 20.4 -significantly below the 23 cutoff for "healthy" living.

and, if you read the study - someone below 23 has a similar mortality rate as someone over 28!

suddenly, when the actual facts of the debate aren't in people's favor, they get real quiet.

by that logic... wrote:

oh, yeah, this isn't a study about anorexic girls or anything, its about underweight men. and it concludes that those with a BMI of under 23 have increased mortality rates. (FYI: a 6 foot male who weighs 150 lbs has a BMI of 20.3)...not as healthy as you thought?

A crock of shit. Read the whole study and not just the abstract and you'll quickly find out that the characteristics of the demographic studied are not those of active people. "Underweight" inactive people almost invariably have some sort of health problem plaguing them, be it a malignancy, a hormonal problem, or a neurological disorder, that knocks up their mortality rates.

No where did I state that the overall expense of anorexia related heart failure exceeds that of obesity related heart failure. What I stated (perhaps nebulously at first, but which I subsequently clarified in a later post) is that, all things being equal, someone who is anorexic is more likely to have heart failure than someone who is obese. I recognize that there are more reported cases of obesity than anorexia, but noentheless, attention is being diverted away from dealing with the rapidly growing problem of anorexia because so many people are on a crusade to reduce the ranks of fat people.

hmmm wrote:

This study has nothing to do with people who exercise regularly but only with BMI. This is simply a quantitative analysis of BMI and there is no evidence to suggest that runners specifically, or really any other exercising population (which are known to have lower mortality), have a higher mortality due to low BMI. I would like to see data on the runners in this study to see what is actually true versus the qualitative accusations you presume.

Your right, there's lots of evidence to suggest that people who exercise regularly are healthier than people who don't. So no matter how you look at it, that study is going to tell you something you don't want to believe.

1. Fat people who exercise regularly are just as healthy, or healthier, than skinny people who exercise regularly.

OR

2. Fat people who don't exercise are just as healthy, or healthier, than skinny people who don't exercise.

OR

3. More fat people exercise regularly than skinny people.

Pick your poison.

touche

Ulysses S. Grant wrote:

"Underweight" inactive people almost invariably have some sort of health problem plaguing them, be it a malignancy, a hormonal problem, or a neurological disorder, that knocks up their mortality rates.

Yeah I thought of that too. But it says in the abstract that there were no known medical conditions for any of the subjects at the start of the study. I'm sure you're going to pick on "known" but you'll really be reaching.

dukerdog wrote:

So no matter how you look at it, that study is going to tell you something you don't want to believe.

2. Fat people who don't exercise are just as healthy, or healthier, than skinny people who don't exercise.

Pick your poison.

What does this mean? That if I want increased health risks I should stop exercising? All you've done is create a syllogism that reinforces the role of exercise in reducing health risks by showing that in the absence of exercise an underweight white male is potentially at as high a health risk as an obese white male.

Why would I not want to believe this? What presuppositions to health care do I have that you know about? I certainly haven't been on the BMI-at-the-flight-gate bandwagon like some and I don't discount the severity of underweight health issues but until America's demographic switches from 60% obese I don't think very low BMI among the non-exercising population is an immediate health concern.

dukerdog wrote:

Pick your poison.

Whataburger. That's my poison.

My antidote? A morning 1-hr run.

Put them in jail until they lose weight. Likewise, put scrawny people in the same jail celss until they put on weight.

Then tape it all for the next hit reality tv series.

The 60% level of obesity is very much over-stated, and that has a lot to do with the flaws in the BMI measurment itself. Maybe 60% of the country is over-weight, but no way is 60% truly obese, when we speak of obese in terms of having negative health risk conotations. I have worked in five different offices, and I realize this is mearly anecdotal, but I never worked anywhere where more than 1/3 of my coworkers even looked over-weight.

As for anorexia, it may not catch the headlines as a national health concern in the way that obesity does. But, it sure as heck is becomming a problem in big cities, such as Los Angeles, New York, and even Chicago. I can't sit at an outdoor cafe in Los Angeles for more than 5 minutes without seeing a sickly underweight person walk by (both male and female). When I visited Chicago where I grew up, I noticed tons of anorexic people at the shopping malls, far more than I used to see 3 or 4 years ago. Since most trends in our country start in New York and Los Angeles, I don't think it will be long before severe anorexia problems spread to other areas of the country. Because, in L.A., the problem is severe right now.

Californian. Smokers and drinkers pay huge amounts of tax because of their weight on the health system. So must the obese. You don't need to be obese to not die of hunger. It's user pays. Measuring it is the hard thing but in the end the obese should be accountable. Stop making pathetic excuses. Overeating is an addiction and a disease.

Exactly, it is an addiction and a disease. If you never ate, you would never get addicted. Unfortunately, food is essential for survival. Alcohol and smokes are not.

hmmm wrote:

What does this mean? That if I want increased health risks I should stop exercising? All you've done is create a syllogism that reinforces the role of exercise in reducing health risks by showing that in the absence of exercise an underweight white male is potentially at as high a health risk as an obese white male.

Why would I not want to believe this? What presuppositions to health care do I have that you know about? I certainly haven't been on the BMI-at-the-flight-gate bandwagon like some and I don't discount the severity of underweight health issues but until America's demographic switches from 60% obese I don't think very low BMI among the non-exercising population is an immediate health concern.

Most people in America, and certainly most people on this message board, equate fat with unhealthy and skinny with healthy. It would be difficult for them to believe any of those 3 statements I listed, yet according to the study, at least one of them must be true. Apparently, you don't have any problem believing #2 is true. I tend to believe both #1 and #2 are true.

I think we both agree (but maybe I'm wrong about that), the real problem is not obesity per se, but lack of regular exercise.

dukerdog wrote:

...the real problem is not obesity per se, but lack of regular exercise.

It's possible to isolate populations of thin sedentary people and active overweight people and reasonably assert that the active overweight people are better off health-wise than the thin couch potatoes. But at a population level this is frivolous. What fraction of people considered obese by any objective standard are actually getting regular exercise? Not many.

Many overweight people, put on the defensive by others' criticism as well as by their own discomfort with their bodies, would have you believe that the high-energy aerobics queen who just can't drop below 180 pounds is the rule, but such people are in fact highly exceptional. Just about everyone in this country could stand to be more active, but people who gain weight more easily than others serve as the most glaring examples of sedentary physiology gone awry.

Also, it's not all about exercise. Obesity has been shown to be an independent risk factor for various health problems, chief among them diabetes mellitus but also including stroke, colon cancer and other morbid conditions and events, many of them mediated through changes in lipid processing at the enzymatic level. Obesity is unquestionably linked to high blood pressure and is virtually always associated with insulin resistance, which in turn can cause all sorts of metabolic mayhem. The exact distribution of excess fat on the body is even known to play a role in disease processes. This is all widely known in the biomedical research community.

So while a "fat tax" seems an overly draconian idea, retorting that thin people have comparable risks of their own or that the health problems linked to excess adiposity are overstated is either disingenuous or ignorant and in any case does not advance the discussion.

Happy Holidays.

Then it must mean that fat people who don't exercise are healthier than skinny people who don't exercise. Otherwise that study that was cited was flawed in some way. I'm not saying that it wasn't. I'm just pointing out the uncomfortable syllogism (as Hmm calls it) that that study leads to.

All of what you said seems perfectly reasonable. Now how do you explain identical mortality risk for obese people and people with BMI's < 23?

Californian wrote:

Exactly, it is an addiction and a disease. If you never ate, you would never get addicted. Unfortunately, food is essential for survival. Alcohol and smokes are not.

Exactly, it is an addiction and a disease. The problem must be fixed by taxes and social support services as does other addictions and diseases like smoking and drinking.

Give up on the starvation argument line - it's bloody pathetic. Learn how to argue efficiently without wasting everybody's time.