Fit and fat? Don't bet on it
What's quickly being called the "fit and fat" study, now online free at the Archives of Internal Medicine, is a game of genetics, aerobics and chance.
Here's how it went down.
- Scientists at the Einstein College of Medicine (part of Yeshiva University, home of the Maccabees) looked at about 5,400 records from the CDC's National Health and Nutritional Examination Surveys.
- Weight was correlated against heart and diabetes risk factors.
- Almost one-fourth of those of normal weight had risk factors, as did one-half of those who were overweight.
- Young, white fatties who exercised were more likely not to have risk factors than others who were overweight.
A press release on the study said a "considerable proportion" of fat people were healthy and a "considerable proportion" of thin people weren't.
Of course it depends on what you mean by considerable. Those who were overweight were twice as likely to have heart risk as those who weren't. Some, of course, did not.
But the press went way overboard. Portly people take heart, wrote the New York Daily News. Fit and Fat: It's Possible crowed Reuters.
A German study clarified these risk factors through physical examination. Fat inside skeletal muscles and the liver is more dangerous than plain old fat under-the-skin.
What the studies are really saying is that a quick look in the mirror doesn't prove good health, but the odds are with you if you get regular exercise. And the correlation of fat to ill health increases as we get older.
This is not really news, but a game we play with numbers. All studies on risk factors show that risks go up in certain cases. No absolutes have ever been given. So you can reverse that, and note that some beat the odds.
Youth, genetic luck and exercise can protect you from sudden heart attack, even if you're overweight. But as you age and slow down, that fat is still bound to get you.
Jackie Gleason (above) lived to be 71. He was exceptional. You might be too. But the odds are against you. It's definitely a bank shot.