Here’s some good news. If you are overweight, over 70, you could very well live longer. Who would’ve thought that? A new study out of Australia that was published on January 28, 2010 in the Journal of American Geriatrics Society has found that it just might be true.
In spite of all the warnings that obesity kills, there is a new Australian study out with findings that overweight adults who are over 70-years-old are more likely to live over a 10-year period than their normal-weight peers. This directly conflicts with studies that have found that being overweight contributes to an array of health problems that lead to an earlier death.
Of course there is a caveat. The first thing is you have to live to be 70-years-old to begin with. If you manage that, then you have to be in otherwise reasonably good health. If those factors are in place, then the risks and benefits of carrying additional weight differ for the over 70 crowd than for younger people. Another factor is an active life-style. Those who lead a sedentary life-style had double the risk of death if they were women and one-fourth the risk of death if they were men. This is according to Leon Flicker, the lead researcher at the University of Western Australia.
The study covered more than 9,200 Australians from ages 70 to 75. The scientist gathered health related data on the group from 1996. The study defined overweight and obesity levels based on the body mass index. That is a measurement comparing weight with height. They studied four weight categories: underweight, normal weight, overweight and obese.
Those who fit into the ‘overweight’ category were at 13 percent lower risk of death compared to those who were in the ‘normal weight’ category. Those who fell into the ‘obese’ category didn’t have the same long life benefits, so apparently there is a limit to how much weight you can carry after 70 to help you live longer.
It is worth noting that the most obese countries in the world are the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia, in that order.
So there are limitations to whether or not being fat can help you live longer. Still, if you are in reasonably good health, don’t sit around all the time, don’t allow yourself to get into the obese category, then you could find yourself happily overweight, over 70 and living longer!
