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“Both increased adiposity and reduced physical activity
are strong and independent predictors of death…A higher level of
physical activity does not appear to negate the risk associated with
adiposity.”
~The New England Journal of Medicine, December
23, 2004
The study results are in. If you want to reduce the risk of dying
before your time, fat but fit isn’t the way to go. Ditto for being slender but
not fit. Fat and sedentary is the worst combination, of course. Lean and
fit is the best way to live out your years. Sounds logical, especially in view
of all the recent hand-wringing about rising obesity rates. Nevertheless, whether
exercise can overcome the risk of being overweight has been controversial, until
now.
Early in 1999, Steven Blair, director of research at
the Cooper Institute of Aerobics in Dallas, opined that fit and fat appears to
be good enough. “In the men who are overweight or obese, but also moderately
or high-fit, we don’t see much increase in the risk of dying,” he told Nutrition
Action Health Letter.
“There has been some suggestion that if you are
particularly active, you don’t have to worry about your bodyweight, about your
diet,” Dr. Frank Hu, lead author of the new study from the Harvard School of
Public Health, told the Associated Press. “That’s very
misleading.”
The Harvard study was large and impressive, encompassing
approximately 2.7 million person-years. The researchers followed 116,564 female
registered nurses for 24 years. The nurses were 30 to 55 and healthy when the
study began in 1976. The nurses, all non-smokers, were monitored for physical
activity and body mass. During the course of the study, 10, 282 died:
2370 from cardiovascular disease, 5223 from cancer, and 2689 from other causes.
The researchers found that being overweight or obese increased the risk of death regardless of the level of physical activity. Exercise helped, but did not overcome the higher risk of death associated with being fat.
Obese women who did brisk walking or other more rigorous
activity three-and-one-half hours or more per week were, nevertheless, almost twice as likely
(91 %) to die as those who were both active and lean. Slender but inactive
women were 55% more likely to die. Those who were both sedentary and obese were
almost two and one-half times more likely to die.
“Women who were both lean and physically active had the
lowest mortality,” the researchers reported.
“Being physically active did not cancel out the increased
mortality of overweight,” Dr. Hu stated.
Applauding the Harvard study, Dr. Timothy Church of the
Cooper Institute of Aerobics Research told the AP: “If you’re lean
but you’re sedentary, don’t fool yourself. You’re still at risk. You need
to get physically active.”
Clearly, the best way to live to a ripe old age is to watch what you eat and exercise.
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