Study Says Seniors Should Focus More on Fitness Than Fatness
SOUTH CAROLINA – A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association reports that overweight and obese seniors who were physically fit outlived their contemporaries – even thin ones who weren’t physically fit.
“There is perhaps too much focus on body weight, and fitness is only an afterthought,” said lead researcher Steven N. Blair, a professor at the University of South Carolina Arnold School of Public Health. Blair’s team looked at the relationship between body fat, fitness and longevity in 2,603 men and women aged 60 and older. Among overweight people in the study, 23 percent were classified as unfit, as were 53 percent of obese people. “You really can’t tell if a person is fit by looking at them,” said Blair.
People who were fit were more than 50 percent less likely to die than unfit people, regardless of weight; overweight but fit people tended to outlive leaner people who weren’t in good shape.
“Being physically fit essentially neutralized the excess mortality risk associated with obesity whereas being unfit was independently associated with excess deaths regardless of body mass or other measures of adiposity [body fat]”.
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