# Obese People Live as Long as Slimmer People



## Radman1110 (Aug 20, 2011)

A recent report: Obese people who are otherwise healthy live as long as normal-weight people, new research from Canada suggests. Some obese but healthy people actually are less likely to die of heart problems than normal-weight people who have some medical conditions, the researchers found. "You shouldn't just look at body weight alone," says researcher Jennifer Kuk, PhD, assistant professor of kinesiology and health science at York University in Toronto. "A healthy lifestyle, including being physically active and eating a healthy diet, is probably more important than your body weight and focusing on weight loss, if you are otherwise healthy,"

http://www.webmd.com/diet/news/20110816/study-obese-people-live-as-long-as-slimmer-people

As a research scientist in pharmaceutical industry I find this report very interesting. The reason for this observation is that in truth a persons health is more dependent on a healthy fat cell metabolism than on the number of fat cells. The big misconception, perpetrated by the diet industry, is that fat cells are considered to be promoters of bad health. However, this misconception has been proven wrong through numerous clinical studies. As long as the fat cells metabolism is healthy, one would not be at high risk for any negative effects from excess weight. Many people are genetically programmed to have more fat cells and will have inherently a higher amount of body fat, which turns out can have a beneficial effect in removing excess lipids from the blood stream. People who have a below average number of fat cells actually have less protection from excess lipids where weight gain can put them at far greater risk for ill effects. The bottom line is that doctors need to never assume that one is unhealthy based on a patients BMI but should make assessments based on lipid profile, blood pressure and blood glucose tests. If anyone wants more detailed information on this subject, please let me know. I have done a lot research on this topic because there is new interest in the pharmaceutical industry on the prevention of negative health effects.


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