Answer To Your Fitness Questions" />For Health, Body Size Can Be Misleading
August 14, 2008
The research findings, based on national collected data from 5,440 adults, demonstrates that weight often times is not a reliable measure for health. The measurements tracked within the study were height, weight, blood pressure, “good” cholesterol, triglycerides, blood sugar and an inflammatory marker c-reactive protien. All were viewed as indicators of cardiovascular health.
Overall, the thinner people were still metabolically more healthy than those who were obese or overweight. However, being a normal weight was not an accurate indicator of health. In the study, roughly 24 percent of thin adults, or 16 million people, were considered unhealthy for at least two of the risk factors.
Those within the “overweight” and “obese” category of the study, roughly 50 percent had two or more of the risk factors, yet 50 percent were also metabolically healthy. And nearly one out of three obese people were metabolically fit.
Although it has always been know that it’s better to fit and fat than being thin and sedentary, the new data suggests for the first time researchers have documented the unreliability of body size as an indicator for overal health.
MaryFran Sowers, study author from The University of Michigan said that stereotypes about body size can many times be misleading, and that even “less voluptous” people can have risk factors associated with obesity.
She also stated then it comes to health risks and weight, “We’re really talking about taking a look with a very different lens.”
Running Slows The Aging Clock, Stanford Researchers Find
August 12, 2008
James Fries, MD, an emeritus professor of medicine at the medical school said, “If you had to pick one thing to make people healthier as they age, it would be aerobic exercise.”
Fries hypothesis was regular exercise would extend high-quality, disability-free life. He speculated while keeping the body moving wouldn’t necessarily extend ongevity, but it would compress the period at the end of life when people wouldn’t be able to carry out daily tasks on their own. This became known as the “compression of morbidity theory.” This is opposite to when has traditionally been thought. Some feared the long-term effect of the then-new jogging craze would create orthopedic injuries, increasing the numbers older runners permanently hobbled by their exercise addictions.
Through his study he found incredible health benefits for the runners. Runners initial disability was 16 yeasrs later than nonrunners and realized “health” for longer periods of time. “When we first began, there was skepticism about our ideas,” Fries said. “Now, many other findings go in the same direction.”
