Being skinny is no guarantee of a healthy heart

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26143255/




To all skinny people.....HA!

From an overweight person...

But hey - to each their own.

"no guarantee" - what absolute GENIUS. :rofl:

... in a sumo match.

:silly:

:hide:

eating habits, thus creating high cholesterol levels and high blood pressure. Much of these diseases are linked to heridity, so nothing is a hard and fast rule, but I suspect it's still better to be thin that fat!

"The new study, appearing in the latest issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine, used government surveys from 1999 to 2004 that included lab tests and height and weight measurements. Participants reported on habits including smoking and physical activity"

Height v weight measurements mean they used the BMI index, which is bullshit.

The suggestion that being skinny is no "guarantee of a healthy heart" could have been proven by a 10 year old.

Idiots. And these people get PAID to be idiots.

the same bullshit measurement they use to track obesity is BMI.

I worry.

My beer kept foaming up.





:beer:


I love the old jokes the best.

My dad who was never overweight, never had a paunch and even was lean and muscular in his seventies had multiple heart problems that did him in. However, he had arteriosclerosis from what I believe was his love of southern food although he didn't overeat and that did him in. You have to cut down on the animal fat or all the exercise and dieting in the world will do nothing for your heart health.

but weight is just one factor out of a body of variables, and among them can be genetics and other lifestyle choices besides diet and exercise, such as smoking, taking the Pill or other medication. There's a woman I work with who is rail-thin, but she has high cholesterol--just the roll of the DNA dice. I'm what might be called "zaftig"--but my blood pressure and cholesterol are good. Which is fortunate since my dad has high blood pressure, and my mom is susceptible to bad cholesterol numbers. I attribute my health to being totally laid back, except when I'm venting. :shrug:. Otherwise my diet is 50/50--cereal and fruit in plenty, but a lot of red meat, my drinking is uh, more than most--although the blood-thinning attributes may be saving my life for all I know. And I think of exercise as running to the car when it rains. Double :shrug:

Stereotypes about health aside--I don't think there's a single-bullet answer to why health problems materialize in some people and not others. What I think pays off is listening to your body, being proactive, and really talking with a doctor if something seems "off". I'm sure there's people who've had those sudden massive coronaries who had a lot of "heartburn", "agita" and light-headedness, etc. leading up to the event--and just never addressed them.

I do kind of know about the "ha!" feeling though--I have bad knees and back pain at times, and every now and again I get a look from someone like, "If you lost some pounds you wouldn't be feeling that..."

Looks from people who don't know which came first (maybe I'm paying now for insults to my body from hard work and exercise when I was fitter?), or who can't think about what it's like to try and get yourself moving when you can't always get yourself moving.

aerobics back in the Jane Fonda aerobics years. So you're right when you say it could be from exercise. I've been obese, I've been underweight and I'm now zaftig, I've seen this issue from all sides and it's my experience that a lot of the comments about weight and health that you hear are really more of a reflection of the speaker's disgust with the aesthetics of obesity and not really so much related to the health aspects. This is why you'll see criticism of any argument that says that obesity isn't necessarily the greatest factor in determining health. If they accept that being fat doesn't necessarily mean being unhealthy then they have to accept that their hatred of fatness is a prejudice and not entirely based in reality. But we overweight people have realized for a long time that the moral outrage about obesity has more to do with hatred for the way we look rather than concern over our health.

We can do risk factor modification for health but we can't have absolute control over our health. It's an illusion to believe that thinness makes you immune and it's hubris to imagine that a thin person is morally superior to an obese person.

tell 'em if they gained some brains they wouldn't be saying that - then give me their names so I can kick some ass - yes INDEED

I consider myself chubby

However, I like the odds a lot better with a runner's body than over a fat body.

there are overweight people who RUN

There are plenty of overweight runners, but all things being equal, I like the ODDS of being thin better.

Just playing the probabilities.

Breastfeeding. How many of us were breastfed and for how long?

It occurred to me some years ago, when reading about atherosclerosis in young people around the time of the Korean War, that essentially none of those persons had been breast fed. Breast feeding almost totally disappeared in the early part of the 20th Century, and finally saw a resurgence much later in that same century. Other studies indicate that what one's grandmother and grandfather ate, or how they lived their lives has an impact at least two generations later. And so, simplistic statements about obesity or thinness or high cholesterol or smoking (and I'm admittedly one of the anti-smoking Nazis) cannot begin to take into account one's mother or grandmother.

It is important not to smoke, to try to maintain a healthy weight, to exercise at least a little, to eat a good and nutritious diet. But we can't control what our mothers or grandmothers did. And we still have genetics to contend with.

I'm one of the lucky ones. I'm almost 60, and while overweight (and yes, I'm trying to drop some pounds) I've never smoked, don't take vitamin or any other nutritional supplements, and I'm the healthiest person I know. But I also come from a line of people who were generally very healthy. Everyone in my parents' generation died of heart disease, and every single one of them smoked. There's no cancer whatsoever in my genetic line. I also have a very firm belief in the power of positive thinking. One of my sisters recently commented on friends who said things like, "My Aunt Sylvia died of breast cancer and I just KNOW I'm going to get it" and said, our bodies hear what we say. And I do recognize that simply refusing to acknowledge the possibility of a disease won't insure that it will never happen, I do believe quite firmly that a positive attitude helps enormously.

None of which is to be taken as my judging those who succumb to terrible diseases as being responsible for the disease. I've known enough people who have had bad things happen to them to know that it's all a crap shoot.

Fear not what you put in your body, for all evil emanates from within.

sorry for my paraphrase, but it's my lifeline.
dp

I mean, a 5'11 man who is 185lbs is considered overweight according to the BMI (which obviously has many issues)... However, assuming the person lives a fairly sedentary life and isn't all that athletic (as the BMI is meant for), most probably wouldn't look at that person and think he was overweight Point being that depending on how you define overweight, there is a large range in which someone could fall... Also, if that same person is a little active and maybe walks or jogs a few days a week for a little bit, then I'm betting they might be better off than someone 20lbs lighter(and not considered overweight) who doesn't get any exercise.

Then of course there are the people who may be on the borderline obese scale when using the BMI, but who are working on losing that weight. Wouldn't it be safe to assume that someone who has been eating healthy and exercising for decent period of time be in better shape than someone who might be 80lbs lighter but doesn't live healthy?

Anyways, these studies seem misleading to me in that they try to make it sound like it's perfectly healthy to not be healthy... hahaha. Ahem, but really the fact is that even if some overweight people are more healthy than some people who skinnier, the fact is that it's because of changes in their life style, and those changes will probably end up causing those overweight people to fall into the 'normal' weight range if they continue on the same path...

I could be wrong here, so feel free to correct me if you feel I am. I might not even make sense.. I need sleep.