A Few Extra Pounds Won’t Kill You, Anymore, Maybe

Forget much of what Geezer has told you about the health hazards of carrying extra weight. Now comes a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, advising us that being overweight does not increase the risk of dying from cancer or heart disease. That’s the good news. The bad news is that being  overweight is still believed to increase the risk of dying from diabetes and kidney disease.
The Washington Post reports on the study, which is published in the New England Journal of Medicine, and which analyzed health statistics that federal scientists collected between 1971 and
2004, including cause-of-death data from 2.3 million adults from 2004. The Post reports that the researchers found an apparent protective effect of excess weight against
all other causes of death, such as tuberculosis, emphysema, pneumonia,
Alzheimer’s disease and injuries. An association between excess weight
and nearly 16,000 deaths from diabetes and kidney disease was
overshadowed by a reduction of as many as 133,000 deaths from all other
deaths unrelated to cancer or heart disease. Even moderately obese
people appeared less likely to die of those causes.Walter Willett, professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, has described the new findings as "rubbish." Read more in the Washington Post.