Pleasantly Plump May Be OK

[Steve]

So now what? Too much or not enough?






Pleasantly Plump May Be OK

New Data Revises Downward the Risk of Death for Being Overweight

By Dr. KWAME FOUCHER





- Obesity may not be as deadly as we once thought. A new analysis of weight and mortality finds that the number of excess deaths each year attributed to obesity and being overweight in the United States is around 112,000 -- about one-quarter of the previous estimate of more than 400,000 deaths.

Last year, when scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta released the initial estimate of 400,000 obesity deaths, the figure came with a dire warning: Obesity was poised to overtake smoking as the No. 1 cause of preventable death in America.

However, other scientists questioned the methods used to calculate the 400,000 deaths and the CDC agreed to a recount. The new paper, published April 19, in the Journal of the American Medical Association finds that the relationship between weight and death is not as straightforward as previously believed.

Katherine Flegal, a senior researcher at the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, and her colleagues determined that both underweight and obese individuals have an increased risk of death, but that there is no increased risk for moderately overweight people.

"I have been a critic of the 'obesity kills' statistics for years -- they assume all fat people die because they are fat," said Glenn Gaesser, professor and director of the kinesiology program at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

But Flegal believes her results are not meant to stand as a definitive answer on the issue of health and weight. "This is a piece of the puzzle," she said. "It is a contribution to the discussion."

Overweight OK?



In public discussions about weight and health, carrying a few extra pounds is often lumped together with obesity, but these new numbers suggest that overweight individuals do not have the same health risks as obese individuals.

"The most striking data here is the remarkably consistent finding, across all [government] surveys from 1970 through 2002, that the lowest mortality risk is found in the 'overweight' category," said Paul Campos, professor of law at the University of Colorado in Boulder and author of "The Obesity Myth." "Indeed, the excess deaths in the government's so-called 'ideal weight' category are quite comparable to those in the so-called 'obese' category."

Compared to normal weight individuals, overweight was associated with 86,000 fewer deaths. But obesity was associated with 112,000 excess deaths.

Obese is defined as having a body mass index greater than or equal to 30; overweight is a BMI of 25 to 29.9 BMI is a measure of body fat based on height and weight.

However, diet and nutrition experts are concerned this interpretation gives people the wrong message about healthy eating.

"People shouldn't think that this study gives them a free trip to the pork rind buffet," said Keith Ayoob, associate clinical professor in the department of pediatrics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.

Experts agree that a good diet and exercise are important for health, but some question whether the multibillion-dollar diet industry has misled Americans about the health hazards of being a few pounds overweight.

"I predict that this won't keep those who are desperate to defend the "fat kills" message from attempting to undercut this data," said Campos. There are "strong economic, social and political drivers, including pharmaceutical companies which are pushing ways to make people thinner."

But diet and nutrition experts counter that, while overweight itself might not be deadly, it can set you up for obesity in the future.

"The best predictor of obesity is being overweight," said Charles Clark, professor of medicine and pharmacology at Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis. "The younger you are when you become overweight the more likely that you will become obese."

Death Not the Only Concern



Diet and nutrition experts believe that focusing on mortality data obscures the true risk of being overweight, which is the toll it can take on a person's quality of life. Obese individuals may not die from their weight, but they often have problems like diabetes or high blood pressure.

"Keeping people alive is one thing. Keeping them feeling good and able to participate comfortably in life is another," Ayoob said.

Flegal would agree. Nothing in the data suggests anything about a decrease in health problems associated with obesity, she said.

Indeed, a second study in JAMA this week reinforces the point that obesity must often be offset with the use of drugs or other medical treatments. An examination of national data from 1999-00 finds that 16 percent of normal weight individuals were receiving treatment for high blood pressure compared with 39 percent of obese individuals.

The good news is that, according the study, today's obese individuals have overall better heart risk profiles than lean people did 30 years ago.

Author Edward Gregg, an epidemiologist for the CDC, attributes the improvement to many factors. "We have better medicines, decreased rates of smoking, awareness of cardiovascular risk factors including cholesterol and blood pressure monitoring," he said. "People are eating healthier foods and using different cooking techniques ... "


Copyright © 2005 ABC News Internet Ventures

[Steve]

Obesity Creates Need for Oversized Caskets

And next to the other story is this one.....


Obesity Creates Need for Oversized Caskets

Obesity Epidemic Creates Niche for Companies to Make Super-Size Caskets

By DANIEL CONNOLLY

The Associated Press



Apr. 20, 2005 - When the funeral director saw the fat man in the small town, they engaged in some friendly banter about death. "You'd tell him, 'You're going to have to go on a diet. You've got to lose some of that weight," said John C. Rudder, owner of Rudder Funeral Home in Scottsboro. "And he'd say 'Yeah, I know, you ain't got a box big enough to fit me.' " "And we didn't," Rudder said.

The solution when the man died: Order an oversized casket.

With an increasing number of Americans considered obese including many in Alabama funeral directors have been dealing with a big problem. Their caskets were not large enough.

Enter companies like Southern Heritage Casket Co. in Oxford, about 60 miles east of Birmingham. It's one of many firms across the nation that are pumping up the size of caskets to meet the needs of increasingly large people.

Last fall, the health advocacy group Trust for America's Health ranked Alabama the most obese state in the nation. Twenty-eight percent of adults in the state were classified as obese.

An additional 35 percent of adults 18 and older are overweight in Alabama, according to the state Department of Public Health.

Obesity causes about 400,000 deaths in the United States every year, according to Trust for America's Health. It's poised to overtake tobacco use as the leading cause of preventable death.

And handling funeral arrangements for an obese person can create additional stress for the family and for the funeral professionals involved.

For years, caskets were built with a standard inside shoulder width of 22 inches to 24 inches, said Jeff Cheek, president of the Southern Heritage, which only makes steel caskets. Now, the company builds standard caskets with widths up to 26 inches and a line of oversized caskets with interior widths from 28 inches to 44 inches.

The caskets are welded together, sanded and painted at Southern's Heritage's plant in Oxford.

"It was almost unheard of to sell stuff this big 10 or 15 years ago," Cheek said.

Cheek, 45, and his father, Arvel Cheek, left another casket company to start Southern Heritage in the 1980s. They started as specialists in children's caskets, which they still make in small quantities.

Jeff Cheek said the company started making oversized caskets in the mid-1980s and began offering the 40- to 44-inch caskets only about two years ago. Southern Heritage had to buy new paint-drying ovens to accommodate the larger size and is planning for more retrofitting of the factory to streamline the process.

Oversized caskets now account for about 20 percent of the company's sales, Jeff Cheek said. The biggest caskets still make up a small proportion of the roughly 50 caskets the company makes per day.

"The 40s and above is probably just now getting to the point that it's one a day," he said.

He said said Southern Heritage has been able to get ahead of other casket companies by offering a selection of oversized styles instead of big, plain boxes. Now the company's catalog offers big caskets in a variety of colors and decorations.

"I realize that everything that leaves here goes to someone who has lost a loved one," he said. "That was the main thought behind us expanding the selection on the big ones. Why is it if someone's obese that they're not entitled to options like everyone else?"

The company ships its caskets throughout the South and to Ohio and Oklahoma. Jeff Cheek said he doesn't notice geographical differences in demand for oversized caskets, but said demand spikes during periods of extreme hot and cold that strain the bodies of obese people.

"It's all over. We have an epidemic," he said. "I can't be judgmental. I'd like to be 25 pounds lighter than I am. I'm sure anyone who's overweight would rather not be that way."

Rudder, the funeral director in Scottsboro, described what happened when the obese man he used to joke with died in September from congestive heart failure. Rudder said the 700-pound man was to be put in an above-ground mausoleum with his parents.

"This fellow had gotten so large that the casket that he had to accommodate his size didn't fit inside the mausoleum," he said. The man was buried outside.

There can be other logistical problems when an extremely large person dies a large casket might not fit into the hearse or might not be able to fit into a chapel.

Costs can be higher, too. When an obese man died in July 2004, his family paid $3,250 for his casket alone, $600 more than it would have cost for a regular casket, Rudder said.

Rudder said there is additional demand for oversized caskets because of an increasing number of people who are simply large, not overweight.

"My youngest son is 6-feet-4 and will weigh 250 pounds," he said. "And he's a big boy. He really won't fit inside a standard size casket. But you don't think of him of being obese. He's big."

Bigger caskets affect cemeteries, too.

Mike Hauser is marketing director of the Ridout's funeral homes and cemeteries in the Birmingham area. He said newer parts of the company's cemeteries now are laid out with wider spaces for graves to accommodate larger bodies and for the use of vaults containers that go around the bodies and prevent soil settling.

In the case of an extremely large casket and vault, a family that purchased a family plot might simply allow the grave to take up two spaces rather than one, he said.

In the meantime, Rudder and other funeral directors are asking for bigger caskets.

"For the last several years, whenever we can get anybody to listen to us, we've been telling the casket manufacturers that they need to give us caskets to accommodate these people where they don't look like they're a cork in a bottle," he said.

The casket companies have responded.

Last fall, Indiana-based Batesville Casket Co., one of the nation's largest casketmakers, introduced 13 new oversized models and introduced the Dimensions brand. It now offers a total of 53 oversized models, company spokesman Joe Weigel said.

And Lynn, Ind.-based Goliath Casket Co. has continued to increase the size of its offerings.

"We make very large oversize caskets. Oversized is kind of an understatement. They're 'supersized,' to coin a famous term," said Keith Davis, who owns the company with his wife, Julane Davis.

Sales have doubled in the last month, he said. The company could sell 800 caskets this year, and it recently rolled out a 52-inch casket.

"That is a little bit wider than a standard pickup bed size," he said.

"The 44-inch, 48-inch, 52-inch are for body weights between 650 and 1,200 pounds. There are people that large, believe it or not," he said.

There are extra supports to make sure the weight doesn't cause the casket to break.



Information from: Birmingham Post-Herald

[doc]

Dr Kwame ****er, or whatever his name is, just looked at the data statistically in a different way. Next year, someone will take the data and come up with different conclusions.

They used to bury the large ones in piano boxes years ago.

[daodejing]

Alls I have to say, is that the BMI is the biggest crock of shit I've ever been introduced to.

[blooming tianshi lotus]

As long as you can keep up with me, I trust you're big and bad enough to make your own descisions how you treat yourself and what information you persue and base it on. A chick can only care soo much right .

BL

[blooming tianshi lotus]

Screw Sttylee and point stealing , but I had a look at this in conmparison to data complided by 42 of the USAs top most medical specialists and med phds etc, and these are their figures on the same matter b :

figures from comparisons based on % of death rate of "normal weight" men and respective influence of bw on mortality .........


108 % : 15 - 34 % underweight ; 99% : 5 - 14% underweight; 100% : normal weight; 122% : 5-14% overweight; 15-24 % : 25+ over weight .........

It also shows that in overweight division ( irrelevant of obesity) that the same health risks are shared and so is dimished capacity of lifestyle.

It also tells that extra pounds over bmi , promtes faciltiy for extra unessesarry miles of blood vessel; through both fat and muscle ( pumping 1-200 mgs of cholestestrol per cubic cm of blood) , creating a whoile iunnesscary work load for the heart. It alaso serms cretinism is an important consideration fr those that are seroius . Ypou ever wondered why muascley men are thought of as meat heads?????? Google on cretinism!!

As it turns out, when you runb your body with too muscle , it effects your brain , your nervous system and your thyroid function. The main detriment of loweredf thyroid funtion, is lowered intellect. being those prteins promte metal nueralogical prouctivity, lack of , literally can end you up with a stupid retarded expession, slurred speach and lack of active nueral recepetors to call on.
Sooooo soo many reasons t eat as I advocate, but d0 as you feel you must. Back with some more solid med facts soon...........

cheers again and stay tuned


Blooming Lotus

[shaolinstylee]

Screw Sttylee and point stealing , but I had a look at this in conmparison to data complided by 42 of the USAs top most medical specialists and med phds etc, and these are their figures on the same matter b :



Blooming Lotus

lol, point stealing?