March is Women’s Health Month on Ignite and all month long we’re going to be discussing topics that may be of interest to women. So to kick things off we thought we’d take a look at some recent news around weight and potential health risks.
Last fall, the results of a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association were fairly surprising. The researchers found that people who are slightly overweight – that is, people who have a Body Mass Index (BMI)* between 25 and 30 – are not at an increased risk for dying from cancer or heart disease. In fact, this study found that being classified as overweight can be linked to improvements in health in terms of muscle mass and bone density.
What’s important to note is that overweight people do have a higher chance of dying from diabetes or kidney disease. Additionally, the cancer and heart disease results found in individuals who are overweight do not exist for individuals who are obese – as classified as having a BMI of 30 or greater. Obesity has been linked to increase risk of death from heart disease, diabetes, kidney disease and a variety of cancers.
The researchers caution that these results do not show a cause and effect – for example, being overweight does not mean one will not die from heart disease. Rather, they stress that it is still important to live healthy. Specifically, while the study is informative, as health care consumers, the rules are still the same – we need to focus on eating healthy, exercising and quitting smoking.
Kerry (a Lumen)
* If you are interested in learning more about your own BMI, you can visit the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s BMI Calculator.