Posted on 08/30/2007 5:12:08 AM PDT by Kaslin
“To lengthen thy life, lessen thy meals.” So observed Benjamin Franklin centuries ago. But Franklin didn’t comment on whether food intake restriction worked by keeping people thin or by making them thin. Indeed, it’s become a mantra of the “size acceptance” groups that there’s no scientific evidence that losing weight increases longevity. And it’s been true – until now.
Sure, a mass of published studies show that thinner is better in terms of overall health and longevity. This notwithstanding the occasional report, like Katherine Flegal’s in 2005, that encouraged the notorious food and beverage industry front group, Center for Consumer Freedom, to practically gloat itself to death with an obese $600,000 newspaper advertising blitz. Inevitably such studies fail to account for thinness from smoking or a wasting disease, are then corrected and like Flegal’s are refuted.
Likewise, the science is overwhelming that losing weight improves markers for premature death such as vascular inflammation, which causes heart disease and stroke. But finally we have two randomized, controlled studies showing a direct cause-and-effect relationship between reducing consumption and increasing lifespan.
Both followed patients of bariatric surgery, which means either reducing the size of the stomach or bypassing it altogether, and appeared in the August 23 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
The first, by Lars Sjostrom of Goteborg University in Sweden and colleagues, followed 2,010 obese bariatric surgery patients over 11 years. It found they were about 30 percent less likely on average to die than matched persons who didn’t undergo the surgery. The leading cause of death in the non-surgery group was heart disease, followed by cancer.
The second study, by Ted Adams and others at the University of Utah, followed 7,925 morbidly obese persons who’d had bariatric surgery. Initially they had an average Body Mass Index (BMI) of 45, equivalent to somebody 5’8” weighing 295 pounds. After an average of just seven years they were about 40 percent less likely to have died than matched controls. They were 92 percent less likely to die from diabetes, 60 percent less likely to die of cancer, and 56 percent less like to die of heart disease.
Bariatric surgery, mind you, has many risks. It’s much healthier to drop pounds with improved diet and exercise. But losing weight, unless done by hacking off a limb, does save lives and we can all regard this as wonderful news, right? Wrong.
There are fatophiles who have found their life’s calling in catering to delusional overweight people, which can be a lucrative market insofar as two-thirds of adult Americans are overweight or obese. Most fat people realize they have a problem, but many would rather believe their condition to be benign rather than taking the difficult (but hardly impossible) route of doing something about it.
One fatophile is University of Colorado law professor Paul Campos, who authored The Obesity Myth. "I would hate to see these studies being used to justify the argument that we should be doing weight-loss surgery to save lives," he told the Washington Post. “At best, it's a very, very modest effect," he said of the study results.
Whoa Nellie! Thirty percent reduced mortality over 11 years or 40 percent over seven years isn’t just “modest,” but “very, very modest?”
Then there’s Sandy Szwarc, properly labeled “a bigwig in the fat acceptance movement.” Like Campos, she’s written that fatter people live longer. She’s even slammed exercise as a means of weight control in claiming – I kid you not – that you have to walk 3,920 miles to lose a mere pound of fat.
Of the new studies, she says it’s a “leap of logic” to assume there’s a correlation between the bariatric surgery and subsequent dramatic weight loss and the “purported improved mortalities.” Granting that the longer survival time may have resulted from divine intervention or alien abductions, what was “purported” about the patients living longer?
Hippocrates, around 350 B.C., observed that "Persons who are naturally very fat are apt to die earlier than those who are slender.” Scores of thousands of published, peer-reviewed studies have now shown that excess body fat kills and cripples, along with demonstrating how and why. Anyone who insist the science says otherwise is being “very, very” dishonest.
Michael Fumento is the author of the 1987 book The Fat of the Land: The Obesity Epidemic and How Overweight Americans Can Help Themselves.
As I have said before, you won’t see a fat 100 year old person.
Food is not your friend or nor is it supposed to be your source of comfort.
In hotbeds of nondiscrimination, one can’t be called “obese” no matter how much they weigh.
It’s just incorrect.
If you get fat, you’ll likely eventually get type II diabetes.
It’s a widely held misconception that dying footless, blind, and bloated is the worst outcome in diabetes.
You could always end up in the ER with a maggot infested leg.
The studies showing that calorie restriction extended average life spans for ALL species tested were done in the 1930s. I never cease to be amazed at how long it takes the medical mainstream to endorse healthy practices. I recently pointed out to my doc that the studies showing benefit from a baby aspirin per day were done in the early 1950s. As of 2007 my doc still was not recommending aspirin to patients with heart disease. At any rate, calorie restriction works if you maintain good nutrition which usually means supplements.
And today there are people who deliberately keep under 1400 calories a day specifically for the life-extending benefits, which are real, measurable, and substantial.
Not sure I could stand that myself, but to each his own...
I don’t have the self discipline to be hungry all day every day. The next best thing is low dose metformin which seems to activate the same genes as calorie restriction.
The longest living people on the planet are from Okinawa. They have a philosophy where they always want to leave the table a little less than full.
Anyone who thinks bariatric surgery is a good remedy for being overweight should check out some of the horror stories about it.
"Okinawans are not only one of the longest-lived ethnicities in the world, but also the healthiest,"
"And it means observing three key principles: kuten gwa ("little portions"), hara hachi bu (eat until 80 percent full only) and nuchi gusui (eating as though food had healing power)"
That's not true. My husband's grandmother lived to 101 1/2 (passing away in 2002). She was quite heavy in all the pictures I've seen of her (except when she was 8), and only lost some weight in the last year. She still wasn't thin when she passed on though, probably 4'11" and 170 lbs.
The pictures of my GG-Grandmother, who passed away in 1929 at 101, also show that she was still at a very matronly weight in her later years. We believe the picture of her was taken around 1920, and she was clearly well over 150 at about 5'5".
While I would in no way deny that what you eat and how much exercise you get contribute a lot to weight, as I've researched family history I've come to believe there is a strong genetic component. Most of my ancestors came to America in the various waves of the Palatinate migration in the 1700's. Those were the years when the French Catholics would invade the Protestant Palatinate region (Germany and Switzerland area) and burn everything of the "heathens" - homes, crops, fields. After each episode more of the protestants left to find freedom in the New World, but the times were very tough. Those who survived the famine were the ones who made it to America, which may have resulted in people whose genes made it because they fattened easily (and consequently survived to make it here), and had the longevity to raise children and grandchildren in the harsher conditions here in Pennsylvania.
I have grandparents and grand-uncles and aunts who lived long healthy lives even though they were overweight. None were morbidly obese as the article says, but they were definitely not thin people.
Our culture has developed legions of people who are incredibly eager to tell us not only how to eat, but how to think as well. Someone save us from the do-gooders.
Michael Fumento is the author of the 1987 book The Fat of the Land
>> This notwithstanding the occasional report, like Katherine Flegal’s in 2005, that encouraged the notorious food and beverage industry front group, Center for Consumer Freedom, to practically gloat itself to death with an obese $600,000 newspaper advertising blitz. Inevitably such studies fail to account for thinness from smoking or a wasting disease, are then corrected and like Flegal’s are refuted. <<
How often do the studies which find that being heavier is unhealthy account for weight gain caused by:
A. Sedentary lifestyles caused by diseases not related to weight gain
B. Diabates
C. Water-weight gain caused by heart disease, kidney dysfunction, etc.
I don’t see them recommending a “ban” or a “fat tax”. Although if the Dim’s ever get their holy grail of socialized medicine, suddenly the government WILL have a compelling interest to start legislating dietary (and all sorts of other) behavior.
>> The first, by Lars Sjostrom of Goteborg University in Sweden and colleagues, followed 2,010 obese bariatric surgery patients over 11 years. It found they were about 30 percent less likely on average to die than matched persons who didn’t undergo the surgery. The leading cause of death in the non-surgery group was heart disease, followed by cancer. <<
Bariatric surgery is normally only prescribed in extreme cases. Any extreme will kill you. Ask Karen Carpenter or 100 million destitutely poor Africans. But wait: we’re not counting those when we say that being thin is healthy, right?
bfl
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