I probably shouldn’t be posting this, seeing how this is a fitness blog, and we should talk about how bad excess baggage (fat and weight) is bad for the health, but secretly I think when I read this I rejoiced, because it always seems I have an extra 5-10 pounds I’m trying to shake, and this new research sort of makes me feel like maybe I’m not supposed to, and this is my true, healthy, God given weight.
In this age when super skinny still seems to be “in” in many circles, especially the Hollywood scene which is unfortunately highly revered by our modern society, it seems that any extra pudge is shunned, and women especially are constantly trying to trim the fat away, to the point of having really no excess body fat. In fact, new research is showing that a LITTLE extra pudge may help you survive some serious illnesses.
That’a little though, we’re talking maybe a max of 15 pounds, anyone who is obese does not gain the benefits we are talking about. Obesity still is a major cause of many illnesses and in fact, also increases the risk of mortality for many common diseases as well, so obesity is out of the picture here.
Very interesting is that slightly overweight people vs. normal or underweight people had a significantly lower mortality rate for diseases such as pneumonia, infection and other diseases that seemed to be lung related such as emphysema.
This is so funny, because it’s kind of like many of our mothers told us, that a little extra weight wouldn’t hurt us, and if we ever got really sick, we may need those fat reserves to help us stay alive! If you think about it, it does make sense though. Survival in general may depend on a little extra junk in the trunk if you know what I mean. If you were stranded somewhere and only weighed a hundred pounds, chances are you’d starve a lot faster than someone with a few extra pounds to burn off!
This entry was posted on Sunday, November 18th, 2007 at 9:14 am and is filed under Health and Fitness News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.