being skinny is more unhealthy than being fat?

where did they find underweight people in America?

:laugh:

Bump

Read the entire paper here: http://www.jabfm.org/content/25/4/422.full

Staying alive for 6 years =/= "being healthy".

The thing that is most nonsensical about this study is that they are trying to separate out the effects of being diabetic or having hypertension from being overweight. These health issues go hand-in-hand. I mean, we know that being obese greatly raises the risk of having diabetes/hypertension, so how does it make much practical sense to say that being obese will not kill you as long as you don't develop these diseases? It's kinda like saying it's okay to smoke as long as you don't get lung cancer, emphysema, etc.

Some of the statements in here were also strange, like the conclusion that "the mortality risk of diabetes was lower among both obese and severely obese persons than among those in lower BMI categories." Really? I guess not correcting for things like diabetes type, cancer, etc., gives you a funny conclusion. Or maybe b/c the data is from self-reporting?

Also, while I don't think that BMI is the be-all-end-all, it can provide some decent, rough guidelines, unless one is very muscular or tall. It does correlate very well with excess fat. Sorry, but if you have a BM of 29+ and you're not muscular or tall, I doubt you are at a healthy weight. I think there's only much of a question if you're near the borderline of healthy/overweight (I'd say to talk with your doc, although even docs sometimes give bad advice when it comes to weight). And if you don't like using BMI, get your body fat measured. But I don't think *most* people at an unhealthy BMI will like that measure either.

talking about articles like this are like trying to talk urself out of common sense....no duh being to skinny isnt healthy......no duh being obese isnt healthy.....just because one is a little worse than the other doesnt mean its a better alternative both are bad choices.

Jerant and his colleagues, surveying nearly 51,000 Americans of all ages over a period of six years, found that "underweight" BMI was far and away the most dangerous category to be placed in. During the study period, the "underweight" subjects showed a risk of death no less than twice as high as the "normal" participants.

What does this even mean? " A risk of death"? When? Within a year? five years? What? We all die eventually...that tells me nothing unless you define "risk of death". Also, often times severe weight loss is a symptom of disease or other terminal illness so this could be an issue of cause and effect. Could it be that the under weight subjects were at a higher risk for death due to another underlying cause? They don't say that the the elevated risk of death is a direct result of being underweight...

Being unhealthy is unhealthy. Doesn't matter which side of the spectrum you fall on.

YEP!!! The Most Intelligent reply on the boards that I have ever seen.

Absolutely right Bronx_Montgom!

Was reading up on these scales, and discovered the "ponderal index," which better scales for height. In case anyone wanted to look at a different measure: http://www.health-calc.com/body-composition/ponderal-index

I personally love how they just cut out people with health issues. No discussion on how many people from each category had them. Maybe the "normals" only had to exclude 1 out of every 20 people for those issues while the "fatties" had to exclude 8 out of 20. There are ways that any study or experiment can be set up to say whatever we want it to say. We could say that amputation among young adults is very high compared to ten years ago if we compared military now to non-military 10 years ago.

I think it depends on just how skinny we're talking. But I don't know if its more or less unhealthy than being obese.

To be honest I think the shock value of seeing an ultra skinny person is higher. Seeing obese people is fairly common and isn't bound to get too much of a reaction. Seeing an ultra skinny person is rare, and is viewed as shocking and disturbing because it reminds us of death and Holocaust victims.

But just because we find ultra skinny people more shocking/disturbing doesn't necesarily mean its more unhealthy than being moridly obese.

Well you would be better off being obese v a skinny smoker.

Its far too random. In general stay away from extremes, ists and isms and ity's

You'll be safe then

Yes we know "being unhealthy is unhealthy." The question is WHAT DEFINES UNHEALTHY.

You people make the internet(tm) such a frustrating place.

I would assume that a women who is 5'5" and weighs 90lbs and is anorexic will die much sooner than a woman who is the same height but weighs 300lbs. I think anorexia takes a greater, faster toll on the heart than obesity.

I've heard this before. It only says they're more likely to die. It doesn't say from what. The reason doesn't have to be health related. One possible explanation is the activity level of active, healthy weight people ("normals" as the article calls them).You're more likely to die at any given moment if you're outside running or climbing rock wall than if you're sitting on your couch.

Agree with this, the article is a limited statement that doesn't say what the people are dying from, just their likelihood of dying at 2 different spectrums of what is considered "unhealthy bmi." I would hazard to say that environmental factors and overall lifestyles have a lot to do with the causes of death. The other question I have is if this would be overall average in life span or at the time of death because with many illnesses (my bil recently died of cancer) one of the side effects can include not being able to retain nutrients or the inability to eat. My 6' BIL spent most of his life in a healthy to high end of the bmi spectrum but by the time he died his health complicaitons had so ravaged his body he was under 130 pounds . . . something like that would certainly skew the facts. I think this is a really unreliable article (notice I didn't say study).

Do these people who write this crap realize there are not two types of weight but three. :grumble: How about this concept, underweight, overweight & a healthy weight. (you know, the one in between) duh!

And these days any of these are more likely to die texting while driving or walking for that matter.