M
Mike Kruger
Guest
The Guardian has an excerpt from a new book by Paul Campos, "The Obesity
Myth". The excerpt is titled "The big fat con story."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,3605,1200549,00.html
There are some interesting points made about the relative unimportance of
body weight per se; I realize that the Guardian is not a medical journal
(and I have no idea of Campos's credentials), but it makes interesting
reading.
Of most relevance here are the following paragraphs on the relative
importance of overweight versus exercise:
"Over the past 20 years, scientists have gathered a wealth of evidence
indicating that cardiovascular and metabolic fitness, and the activity
levels that promote such fitness, are far more important predictors of both
overall health and mortality risk than weight. Yet none of the studies most
often cited for the proposition that fat kills makes any serious attempt to
control for these variables.
"The most extensive work of this sort has been carried out by Steven Blair
and his colleagues at Dallas's Cooper Institute, involving more than 70,000
people. What they have discovered is that, quite simply, when researchers
take into account the activity levels and resulting fitness of the people
being studied, body mass appears to have no relevance to health whatsoever.
In Blair's studies, obese people who engage in at least moderate levels of
physical activity have around one half the mortality rate of sedentary
people who maintain supposedly ideal weight levels.
"Similarly, a 1999 Cooper Institute study involving 22,000 men found the
highest death rate among sedentary men with waist measurements under 34
inches, while the lowest death rate was found among fit men with waist
measurements of 40 inches or more. A 1995 Blair study found that improved
fitness (ie, going from "unfit" to "fit"), with the latter requiring a level
of exercise equivalent to going for a brisk half-hour walk four or five
times per week, reduced subsequent mortality rates by 50%. As Blair himself
puts it, Americans have "a misdirected obsession with weight and weight
loss. The focus is all wrong. It's fitness that is the key." "
Other interesting claims: (1) people who are overweight have less problem
with osteoporesis, (2) The diet Hillary put Bill Clinton on might have been
partly responsible for his obsession with Monica Lewinsky.
--
---
Mike Kruger
Blog: http://journals.aol.com/mikekr/ZbicyclistsZlog/
Myth". The excerpt is titled "The big fat con story."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,3605,1200549,00.html
There are some interesting points made about the relative unimportance of
body weight per se; I realize that the Guardian is not a medical journal
(and I have no idea of Campos's credentials), but it makes interesting
reading.
Of most relevance here are the following paragraphs on the relative
importance of overweight versus exercise:
"Over the past 20 years, scientists have gathered a wealth of evidence
indicating that cardiovascular and metabolic fitness, and the activity
levels that promote such fitness, are far more important predictors of both
overall health and mortality risk than weight. Yet none of the studies most
often cited for the proposition that fat kills makes any serious attempt to
control for these variables.
"The most extensive work of this sort has been carried out by Steven Blair
and his colleagues at Dallas's Cooper Institute, involving more than 70,000
people. What they have discovered is that, quite simply, when researchers
take into account the activity levels and resulting fitness of the people
being studied, body mass appears to have no relevance to health whatsoever.
In Blair's studies, obese people who engage in at least moderate levels of
physical activity have around one half the mortality rate of sedentary
people who maintain supposedly ideal weight levels.
"Similarly, a 1999 Cooper Institute study involving 22,000 men found the
highest death rate among sedentary men with waist measurements under 34
inches, while the lowest death rate was found among fit men with waist
measurements of 40 inches or more. A 1995 Blair study found that improved
fitness (ie, going from "unfit" to "fit"), with the latter requiring a level
of exercise equivalent to going for a brisk half-hour walk four or five
times per week, reduced subsequent mortality rates by 50%. As Blair himself
puts it, Americans have "a misdirected obsession with weight and weight
loss. The focus is all wrong. It's fitness that is the key." "
Other interesting claims: (1) people who are overweight have less problem
with osteoporesis, (2) The diet Hillary put Bill Clinton on might have been
partly responsible for his obsession with Monica Lewinsky.
--
---
Mike Kruger
Blog: http://journals.aol.com/mikekr/ZbicyclistsZlog/