What do you think of this?http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2007/10/obesity-paradox-13-take-heart.html?

Question

What do you think of this?http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2007/10/obesity-paradox-13-take-heart.html?

Answer 1

Human beings are natural liars. The author you've linked to and the people she quotes are all pushing a thesis not because they've considered all sides of the issue, but because it strokes their ego to be contrarian.



Obesity is not a risk factor for coronary artery disease. No one says it is. Hypertension, diabetes, cigarettes, high LDL and family history are risk factors for atherosclerosis in coronary arteries, for stroke and anywhere else in the body. I spent my career reading articles documenting that. It's not some fantasy.



Most people who are obese do not have hypertension and diabetes, yet. The rate of diabetes keeps going up. Is the combination of obesity and lack of exercise making the risk for diabetes from obesity worse? It's hard to say. But it's not hard to say that obesity increases the risk for hypertension and diabetes. I've seen it in my own body, leading me to take antihypertensives in my forties and to suddenly have a blood sugar over 500 in my fifties. Losing 60 pounds fixed that. It made my fatty liver go away. It had all sorts of benefits.



Now this article makes a big deal that the death rate of those with a BMI less than 20 is high. Do you know what someone with a BMI in the teens looks like? I'm 6'3". For my BMI to be under 20, I'd have to weigh less than 160. I'd look like a survivor of a prisoner of war camp. The tables of ideal weight don't go that low. They're based on many studies of mortality and are reliable.



PT Barnum was right. There's a sucker born every minute. Anyone who wants to embrace an article like this one to say there's nothing wrong with being overweight can do so. Maybe time will prove them wrong as my complications of obesity taught me. Maybe they'll die from something else before they get any complications of obesity. It sounds like natural selection to me.

Answer 2

I think David needs to look at the study again. Compared to ‘normal’ weight patients, the thin patients had 74% higher risk of both death and having a heart attack or stroke, whereas the ‘overweight’ patients had 29% lower risk. But the obese had the lowest risks of all, nearly half that of ‘normal’ weight patients. Only at the very highest BMIs did the risks begin to creep up but they were still less than the overweight and most notably less than the ‘normal’ weight patients. These survival benefits were seen among the fattest, even though they had the highest rates of DIABETES, high cholesterol, and HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE (even after treatment with medications).

Answer 3

giggle giggle!!! it is in the best interest of pharma companies to make us believe in the fat is bad theory!! Have you taken a look at the $$$ value of "diet pills" and "cholesterol pills" ?



Go look!! It is a multi billion dollar industry on either front!!



I read a book in the late 1960s on "How to Lie with Statistics". I forget the authors name now, but it was about taking a small fact and making a huge ant hill out of it.



This has been done with fats by government agencies, pharma companies, and insurance companies.



We are to be really skinny instead of Rubenesque!!