Under a newer study the CDC found that only 25814 people a year died from obesity. Actually 111,909 supposedly died but there were also lives saved by being moderately overweight. After subtracting them you end up with the figure 25814. Also there is this fact, that most deaths only affect the seriously obese.
The vast majority of deaths associated with obesity (82,066 of 111,909) come from individuals with a BMI of 35 and above.
So if being overweight saves 86095 lives a year and only 29843 moderately overweight people die a year of obesity (111909 - 82066), wouldn’t that make being moderately overweight something that saves 55000 lives a year instead of a health risk? Thats probably something for another topic, my main question is about the legitimacy of the new study. http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2005-06-02-obesity-confusion_x.htm?csp=34
Many scientists from the Harvard School of Public Health, the American Heart Association and the American Cancer Society now reject those conclusions. They say the study’s main flaw is that it included people with health problems ranging from cancer to heart disease, who tend to weigh less because of those problems and therefore make pudgy people look healthy by comparison.
Doing this is “looking at people who are thin because they’re sick, not who got sick because they’re thin,” said Dr. Michael Thun, the cancer society’s chief epidemiologist.
So how many of the people who are thin were thin due to illnesses? Has anyone studied that yet? Have they corrected for it?
I don’t think it’s been conclusively proven that most of these diseases are “caused” by obesity any more than being thin creates a shorter life span. I know that there are connections to certain diseases and obesity, but from what I gather (which isn’t saying a whole lot), scientists don’t fully understand the links. For example, why have some studies shown folks’ symptoms to improve with lifestyle changes but negligible weight loss?
I think in general to say that obesity itself causes death is a sad oversimplification.
I wish I could give a real answer to your question, but I thought I would just chime in with my opinion, anyway.
I agree, the obesity situation has been grossly exaggerated. However the main criticism of the new CDC findings is the feeling that there could be some margin of error due to pre-existing illnesses which strikes me as odd, because what percentage of the population is wasting away from AIDS, cancer and heart disease as we speak? It is probably low, maybe 10% tops. Plus what about the health problems that encourage obesity as a side effect such as high stress levels (for one thing, stress is related to cortisol, which factors into appetite) and sleep deprivation (sleep deprivation is tied to inbalanced ghrelin and leptin levels, both of which control appetite). I emailed Paul Campos about it but do not know if I will ever hear back from him, he is probably busy.