Study Finds Overweight Adults May Live Longer

Overweight older adults may face lower risk of death.
The Los Angeles Times (1/28, Stein) "Booster Shots" blog reported that "a new study finds that" some "older people may be exempt from" the struggle to reduce one's waist line. After analyzing data on more than 9,000 individuals, researchers in Australia discovered that "men and women ages 70 to 75 had a lower mortality rate if they were overweight than if they were normal weight."
The "risk for death for overweight participants" was 13% lower "than for normal-weight participants," Medscape (1/28, Barclay) noted. The paper, appearing in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, also revealed that "across all levels of BMI, being sedentary doubled the mortality risk for women (HR, 2.08; 95% CI, 1.79 - 2.41) but was associated with only a 28% greater risk for men (HR, 1.28; 95% CI, 1.14 - 1.44)." The study authors said that "it may be time to reevaluate the system that determines who is overweight and obese," HealthDay (1/28, Dotinga) reported.
Along similar lines, Time (1/28, Song) points out that the new work "adds to the ongoing scientific debate over how to define ideal weight in adults and whether the widely used measure of weight categories -- body mass index (BMI), a measure of body fat based on a ratio of weight and height -- is equally useful for all age groups." AFP (1/28) and MedPage Today (1/28, Bankhead) also covered the study.