If you would have told me yesterday that being overweight may actually be the true key to living longer, I probably would have laughed in your face and told you to put your cocktail down because CLEARLY you're drunk and talking crazy. According to a new (and very extensive) study, though, I would be very, very wrong. It turns out that there is actually a link between being overweight (though not obese) and a lower risk of mortality. But is that really as good as it all sounds? Is having a few extra pounds around the middle going to give you a few extra years?
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According to the research published in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), as reported by TIME.com's Healthland, study lead author Katherine Flegal, a senior research scientist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) looked at over "100 previous published research papers connecting body weight and mortality risk among 2.88 million participants living around the world."
However, while this news may be surprising and pretty unbelievable, I wouldn't count on this to actually be a free pass for you to eat just about anything and allow yourself to gain a few pounds. The problem still remains that the researchers have NO idea why this is true, so PUT DOWN THAT COOKIE!
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For now, Flegal and her co-authors can only assume why this might be. Some of their theories include that overweight and obese people get medical care (since their doctors are likely to screen them more regularly for chronic diseases, such as diabetes of heart disease) and that those that are overweight might survive disease and surgery better (since if you end up in a medical emergency and lose 15 pounds, you might do better if those were excess pounds).
Well, that may be fine and good–but that definitely isn't a reason to let yourself keep being overweight. I personally think these are practically coincidences. You can't really count on living longer if you're overweight just because you might deal with hospitalization better or because your doctor watches your check-ups more closely. I'm betting that eating well, exercising more and living healthy is the thing that will ACTUALLY made you live well into old age and, you know, without the diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease.
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