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Numbers dying from obesity
According to the latest CDC estimates, obesity may be associated with 112,000 excessive deaths each year, although even they note that their figures don’t account for actual causative factors such as bariatric surgeries, yo-yo-dieting, diet drugs, discrimination in healthcare, activity levels and socioeconomic status, to name a few. But taken as face value, 30.6% of the population labeled “obese” translates into 92,133,000 Americans. That means each year only 0.12 percent are possibly “dying from their obesity.”
Risks of dying from obesity
Over recent years, claims of the risks associated with body weight have used statistical models, although their flaws have been the topic of intense criticism in the medical literature. In contrast, throughout history, legitimate epidemiological studies have used actual deaths. The majority of body-weight and mortality studies published over the last half century have found weight to be irrelevant to health or mortality, except at the most extremes. And the lack of support for any relationship remains even when factors such as smoking, preexisting illness and length of followup are taken into consideration.
“Certainly there is no steady increase in mortality with increasing overweight,” according to Dr. Ernsberger and Paul Haskew in a comprehensive review of more than 400 papers in the Journal of Obesity and Weight Regulation. In fact, most show fatness especially as we age, to be particularly favorable for longevity.
The risks for the very fattest people are commonly exaggerated, as are their actual numbers. While the very most extremes of obesity represent a tiny fraction of our population, they are the ones typically depicted without heads on the news, giving the public a much different impression of obesity than is reality.
Since the vast majority of bariatric surgeries are done on fat women and they are being most frightened about their risks of dying, let’s consider their mortality rates. As researchers at the CDC National Center for Health Statistics reported in their analysis of existing studies in the 1996 issue of International Journal of Obesity & Related Metabolic Disorders, among women “there is little relationship between BMI and mortality.” The studies consistently show an especially wide range of body weights among women similarly optimal for longevity. According to research by Dr. Edward Harry Livingston, M.D, at the University of Texas Southwestern, “based on obesity alone, a woman was no more likely to die at a body mass index of 50 (approximately 310 pounds) than at 35.”
Launched as the world’s largest epidemiological study of BMI and life expectancies, which followed 1.8 million Norwegians for four decades, the Norway Study found that the most morbidly obese women with BMIs of 40 or above reduce their life expectancy about as much as “ideal” weight women who are light smokers. “However even these extremely obese women still have a longer life expectancy than normal-weight men,” said Ernsberger. Yet, we are not being inundated with scares about the deadliness of being male, millions aren’t spent to eradicate maleness, and men make up a fraction of bariatric patients.
“For a 25 year old woman who’s at the very fattest 0.2 percent of women, her risk of dying is 0.1 percent (0.18 percent if she were 35 years old),” according to Ernsberger. [The corresponding mortality rates for women of “ideal body weight” are 0.05% and 0.13%.]
In other words, a woman at the very fattest 0.2% of women has a 99.9 percent chance of living another year.
(from junkfoodscience.blogspot.com)
I invite you to visit this site and read the obesity paradox posts.
It depends wholly on from where the weight comes.
A Decathelete that weights 210 and has a 7% body fat is obese by BMI.
I ran into this crap in the IDF all the time because I pushed the BMI off the scale while have a sub-10% body fat.
bump
Personally, I am about 5’-10”. I weight 198. I work out 3 times a week, cardio and weights. I’m built like a truck. I’m in good shape. According to the experts I should weigh about 175 to be “healthy”. I didn’t weigh that in the Army, and I’m supposed to weight that now?
I figure I could get down to 190, maybe, and still be healthy.