Chubby people live longer

[tpsbmam]

Health experts have long warned of the risk of obesity, but a new Japanese study warns that being very skinny is even more dangerous, and that slightly chubby people live longer.

People who are a little overweight at age 40 live six to seven years longer than very thin people, whose average life expectancy was shorter by some five years than that of obese people, the study found.

"We found skinny people run the highest risk," said Shinichi Kuriyama, an associate professor at Tohoku University's Graduate School of Medicine who worked on the long-term study of middle-aged and elderly people.

.........
The study was conducted by a health ministry team led by Tohoku University professor Ichiro Tsuji and covered 50,000 people between the ages of 40 and 79 over 12 years in the northern Japanese prefecture of Miyagi.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.c7aaeb7940626693fa418a1eab2291f6.81&show_article=1


This is pretty consistent with a few other studies I've read.

[dkf]

1. Hey I'm in the process of increasing my life span!

Who knew?

[Strong Atheist]

39. ... but your cat looks unhappy ... nt.

[Xipe Totec]

2. Long live the zaftig! n/t

[Number23]

44. Yep! And they are sooooooo much more pleasant to hug!

:)

[eleny]

3. K&R for chubbiness, for Marilyn Monroe and Sofia Loren

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

10. Yay! Sofia Loren must be one of the most beautiful women on this planet.

[agent46]

36. Correction

Sofia Loren IS and always has been one of the most beautiful women on the planet. Stop.
:-)

[ensho]

59. true and a great actor

will never forget the movie that had her and her daughter being gang raped during WWII at the same time, side by side.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

61. Yep! You're right!

:hi:

[pleah]

4. Nice to know that they have a study that proves being skinny is not what it is cracked up to be.

K&R

[imdjh]

8. Based on the axiom "There are no fat people in nursing homes."

Of course, no one thinks to reason that this is because fat people are happy and nice to be around and so they don't get put in nursing homes with the cranky old skinny "one will do" people.

[grannie4peace]

5. my grandma was hefty & she lived to be 83

[Duke Newcombe]

6. At my rate, I'll live until the third Millenium... n/t

[notadmblnd]

7. My husband was skinny. I used to tease him that if he got sick,

he would go in a snap. Where I would waste away slowly and make a lot of people's lives miserable. My words turned out to be prophetic for him. We'll see someday if I predicted my own demise too.:shrug:

[TahitiNut]

9. ... and wider, too.

(Deja vu.) :silly:

[ohheckyeah]

11. That's a terrible re-writing of that article.

It included the obese, not just the chubby. In fact the original article never uses the word chubby.

Obese men and women (BMI of 30 or more) lived a further 39.41 and 46.02 years, respectively. But thin men (BMI of less than 18.5) were on average expected to live 34.54 more years, and thin women another 41.79 years.
http://www.theage.com.au/lifestyle/wellbeing/study-tips-scales-the-other-way-overweight-people-live-longer-20090618-cm13.html

[theoldman]

13. Obese people are always looking forward to a study like this.

Some obese people may live to be 85 but none live to be 100. That is a statistical fact. Obese people have many more health problems. Just ask your doctor. Plain and simple, healthy people live longer and obese people are not healthy.

[bread_and_roses]

14. not everyone wants to live to be 100

i sure as hell don't. good thing, as i'm not likely to - being thin and all, lol.

[OhioChick]

18. Same here.....lol n/t

[Control-Z]

26. Neither do I.

The thought of living that long is actually kind of frightening to me.

[deminwi]

15. I'll have to tell my 101 year old grandma that she needs to die

My grandma has been obese as long as I have known her (I'm 45) and she is still kicking at 101. She has Alzheimers (probably did not spell that correctly), but her body keeps going and going and going and going. She has outlived three of her children.

Those people who count people over 100 and determine whether they are skinny or fat must have missed my grandma's assisted living place. Is there a number that I can call to ask these fine folks to stop by and count my grandma?? After all, she is the first fat person to reach 100.

[truedelphi]

32. They also say that the whiney & complain-ey types die off sooner

Than the more stoic, but my dad happily grumbled and moaned his way to his early death at Ninety.

And I plan to follow in his footsteps, if the guldarn, rotten world would just get out of my way.

[Strong Atheist]

40. EXTREMELY Belated Welcome to DU!

:toast:

[deminwi]

60. Thank you very much!

I am been a member of DU for a long time but don't post much. I love to read what people have to say but seldom make my opinions known.

[Strong Atheist]

64. Yes, I see. Well, enjoy!

:hi:

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

19. My fat grandmother made it to 98.

And it wasn't a weight-related problem that finally did her in; she got pneumonia.

[Control-Z]

24. I have never seen

a real old obese person. I'm not talking about chubby. I'm talking obese. There is a large retirement community in the city next to mine, and there are virtually no obese elderly to be seen. That says more to me than any study.

Edit to add: These are people who own their homes, are out in the community, shop at the mall... Maybe the heavier folks don't get out as much?

[Nikia]

38. Several of my relatives on all sides of my family have lost weight

Once they got older. The age when their weight loss started varied, but even the obese ones were somwhat thin by 80. They lost height, muscle, and fat during their aging process. There wasn't anything intentional about it.

[dgibby]

50. I would, but he's dead.

[Iris]

72. um... not a single one? Do you have a link that fact?

[girl gone mad]

28. They didn't even account for smokers v non-smokers.

It's kind of hard to take this study seriously.

[CTyankee]

48. Was smoking a factor in this study? Also, there are people who are skinny because they are seriously

ill with terminal cancers. I wonder if those two groups were heavily represented in this study...

Also, I'd like to know how large the study was and how long it was conducted...

[lunatica]

12. Actually it's people who have birthdays who live longer than anyone else

[Vidar]

62. Devastating logic. LOL

[SheilaT]

16. Some years back I read of similar results.

A lot of the skinny people (although by no means all) are smokers, which isn't very good for you.

There's a difference between being obese and simply a little overweight, or even at the upper end of a normal weight. Again, look at the nursing homes and there are very few obese, let alone morbidly obese people in them.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

17. I guess I'll be around for awhile, then.

My chubby grandmother made it to 98.

[SoCalDem]

20. Every "body" has its own optimum weight. This is the weight that it "wants" to be

People who constantly diet, to fight it, will make themselves sick, and over time will upset the mechanism that determines what's normal for that person. Most people who look at pictures of themselves throughout the decades, will notice that most of us gain weight as we go along. This is probably nature's response to inactivity and age-related health issues. In times when famines were commonplace, and food hard to find, older people may have needed to be able to maintain "reserves", since they were less likely to be the hunters & gatherers.

[Obamanaut]

22. Does this mean people stuff themselves with cookies, fries, etc. because

the body "wants" to be heavier? Or is it the body simply becomes heavier due to the stuffing, and the owner of that body justifies it with "oh, my body 'knows' what it's preferred weight is"?

[Control-Z]

27. Gaining weight can happen

without stuffing ones self "with cookies, fries, etc." I don't know much about men and weight gain, but at a certain age most women naturally put on extra weight without having changed their diets.

[Obamanaut]

31. That's true of men as well. As we age, it becomes increasingly

necessary to be mindful of what we (based on my own experience) eat and how much of it. As a general rule, we exercise less, which makes the weight issues even more difficult to control if we continue to eat as we did when more youthful.

Face stuffing at any age is not good, and using cookies, fries, etc. as the stuffing material is also not good - at any age.

[SoCalDem]

51. I never "said" that, now did I?

What I said, was that each person has their own "range" that they will weigh, under normal circumstances, no matter how much they diet from time to time..

There are millions of people who have been fighting that same 10-15 lbs, their whole life, and as soon as they "go off" their diet, they gain it right back. Excessive dieting can throw the metabolism out of whack, over time, and the new "norm" gets "re-set" and the weight gain ratchets upward.

I've known people (as we all have) who never gain an ounce, no matter what they eat. A high school friend of mine lived on pizza, beer, ice cream, junk food, and never weighed more than 90 lbs, but her whole family was skinny, so she obviously had some skinny-genes in the mix.

Before the chemists (alchemists?) got involved in our food, and we did more manual labor, people seemed less weight-obsessed... and there seems to have been a lot fewer extremely obese people

[lunatica]

25. Lots of women gain weight when going through menopause

And it has nothing to do with food. And it's damn near impossible to take off because of the fact that it's not related to food. I think for some women it's a genetic thing that kicks in during menopause.

[Control-Z]

29. I just posted

pretty much the same thing (before reading your post).

[Obamanaut]

21. Not ALL chubby people live longer, and many are not healthy. Not

ALL smokers get lung (or other cancer.) Some non smokers do, but the odds favor of the non-smokers.

I'll take my chances and remain a non-smoker and non-chubby. I suspect I'll do better in the long run. Oh, as a non-smoking non-chubby person I really can do a long run. Or a long bicycle ride. Or buy a single seat on an airline rather than "seating for two."

[Leftist Agitator]

58. "ALL smokers get lung (or other cancer.)"

Bullshit.

My 88 year old grandfather has been smoking a pack of unfiltered Pall Mall cigarettes a day since he was sixteen, and hasn't gotten cancer. Nor has he had a heart attack, emphysema, or developed any other smoking related malady.

[Left Is Write]

63. The poster did not say that all smokers get lung or other cancer.

There is a "not" in the subject line. He/she said "Not all smokers get lung (or other cancer)."

[Confusious]

23. I'll wait for v3 of this report

The first versions always have flaws, and this one directly contradicts a another report about this. ( came out last year I think? )

It may also be only good for Japanese people. Americans have a different diet, and as much as we would like not to, there's going to be a difference between a japanese male and American black, white or purple male.

actually it Just says chubby, not obese. It doesn't give a number for BMI, but I'm sure obese cuts years off your life. however, there are exceptions.

[reggie the dog]

30. ok, you fat people may live longer than me

but I will not stop working out and put on weight because I like being able to ride my bike 30 miles throught the mountains at a time and I like doing 10 mile hikes in the mountains without having trouble making it up and down thousand foot ridge lines.

[nashville_brook]

47. however, if this were a study about nice people living longer, you'd be screwed.

[reggie the dog]

55. where was I not nice?

I did not say anything insulting. I went biking with a fat friend and had to push him up the mountain. He took that badly and started working out and playing tennis again and has lost 20 pounds. If you are comfortable in your body being fat that is fine with me. Notice I said nothing about beauty, which is in the eye of the beholder, I just said I do not want to be fat because I like to do my sports in the mountains. I did not mean to offend anyone.

[cherokeeprogressive]

67. "Okay, you fat people..." "fat friend... "your body being fat..." "I do not want to be fat..."

You didn't "mean to offend anyone". How disengenuous.

The study wasn't about "fat" people, now was it? Truth?

[reggie the dog]

69. chubby, fat, what is the difference?

chub·by (chb)
adj. chub·bi·er, chub·bi·est
Rounded and plump. See Synonyms at fat.

Synonyms: fat, obese, corpulent, fleshy, portly, stout, pudgy, rotund, plump1, chubby



How is it mean to say that I do not want to be fat? As I said if you or others are comfortable being fat that is fine with me, I pass no judgement on you. And yes my friend phil was fat, and 9 years ago it was me who was getting fat and he made fun of me because I cut one way playing basketball, and my belly went the other way. So I started to work out and bike ride and lost 25 pounds. Now I made fun of him a bit and he is doing the same. From what I see chubby is fat.

[cherokeeprogressive]

71. Rationalize your shittiness by whatever means you need to in order to make it work for you. n/t

[earth mom]

33. Skinny people look ill to me. They look like corpses.

I patted my friends husband on the back when we went to say goodbye and his back was all sharp bones. It totally creeped me out! :hide:

p.s. My pleasantly plump grandmother made it to 83 and my healthy and "solid" not fat, but not thin, grandpa made it to 95! My husbands slightly chubby mom is still alive and kicking it at 85!

[reggie the dog]

56. we look like corpses???

with our muscles and all huh. A society in which the majority of the people are overweight creeps me out.

[Codeine]

70. Wow.

And I'd be crucified if I said something similar about how ill fat people look.

[mucifer]

34. crap, I have a little bit of extra weight and I'm not interested in the extra years.

[DailyGrind51]

35. "Little old ladies/men" are "old" BECAUSE they are "little"!

[Iris]

73. really? I thought they were little because they were old.

[spiritual_gunfighter]

37. Obese people are unhealthy

I used to be obese I had diabetes, high blood pressure, hypertension you name it. I lost over a hundred pounds and I have none of those problems now. I will take the way my life is now over being overweight and unhealthy any day. Exercising and watching what you eat is what puts years on your life. Not being overweight. This is a ridiculous article and was written to make overweight people feel good about being unhealthy.

[BlooInBloo]

41. Lucky for them, since they have absolutely no power over their weight whatsoever.

[SmokingJacket]

42. Another study of association...

Sick people lose weight... so lots of underweight people are suffering from diseases. And, as the article mentioned, lots of them smoke -- the study is worthless unless the account for smoking, drugs, and preexisting conditions (do they? I didnt' see.)

I have 5-10 pounds I'd LOVE to lose, but I'm not going to starve myself or exercise into exhaustion to do it. I'd have to drastically undereat to do it, and that's not healthy. Slightly chubby people are better nourished (prolly get more vitamins) and just aren't suffereing huge amounts of physical stress.

That doesn't mean that GAINING weight will help, or that losing it will kill you.

[Mari333]

43. longevity is over-rated. nt

[TahitiNut]

53. So is thinevity.

:dunce:

[Mari333]

54. thats the truth

:P

[pacalo]

45. This message was brought to you by Mickey D's, KFC, & Baskin & Robbins.

:rofl:

[dweller]

46. i'll just follow the advice of world's oldest man, 113 years old now

"he attributes his longevity to "cigarettes, whisky and wild, wild women".

and adds: "The trick is to look after yourself and always know your limitations."

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/the-secret-of-a-long-life-cigarettes-whisky-and-wild-women-1710744.html

ymmv,
dp

[flvegan]

49. One more time: Any study based on BMI is instant bullshit.

Next.

[HughMoran]

52. I was going to say, I've seen similar articles over the years

...basically that people with a little extra stored energy (fat) can better withstand a sudden extended bout of sickness.

[Matariki]

57. wonder how the Japanese define 'chubby'?

[Lydia Leftcoast]

65. It kind of makes sense, because the way it's so easy to put on weight

and harder to take it off as you grow older suggests that Nature actually WANTS us to put on a few pounds later in life.

Most of the people I know who stay skinny after age fifty do so by starving themselves. They're the types whose entire lunch consists of half a sandwich with one thin slice of turkey and a leaf of lettuce, no butter or mayonnaise, and a very small piece of fruit.

By the way, if you've lived in Japan, you'll notice that even Japanese people put on a few pounds beginning in middle age. You don't see a lot of fat young people, but many of the middle-aged and older people are "well-rounded."

What you hardly ever see in Japan, though, is full-blown obesity in the 300-pound range. I attribute that to the fact that Japanese people walk and cycle much more than we do in the course of their normal routines.

[11 Bravo]

66. Then that fucking Limbaugh should live to be 150.

[Xipe Totec]

68. I think he's living close to 300 n/t