| What Do The Experts Really Say? (Continued)
Dr. Andres explains that weight loss can improve blood sugar levels, blood pressure and cholesterol levels.
"It's natural to expect all of those things to improve," he said. "If you lose weight but the only problem is that when you look at mortality rates, they don't look good. Fat people who are subject to weight loss have a higher mortality rate than those who remain fat."
There is some reason to believe that this is because dieting crucially affects vital organs, especially heart muscle. And Prof Ancel Keys discovered in the 1970's that cholesterol levels rise after dieting.
The National Institute on Aging is analyzing their data. Since 1958, it has been following thousands of people, gathering data on their health, including body weights and blood sugar levels.
At the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, they also ask: Do fat people who already have diabetes and who lose weight become healthier? In particular, do they have lower risks of heart attacks and strokes, does their diabetes improve, and do they live longer?
Dr. Jules Hirsch, an obesity researcher at Rockefeller University, provided evidence from studies which followed thousands of people for many years.
These studies kept track of who lost weight, who kept it off, who became
ill and who died. Repeatedly, investigators reported that fat people who lost weight and kept it off had more heart disease and a higher death rate than people whose weight never changed. Another expert, Dr. Katherine Flegal, an epidemiologist at the National Center for Health Statistics confirms this: "It certainly indicates that weight loss is not associated with lower mortality but is actually associated with higher mortality." | Investigators at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, is recruiting 5,000 overweight people with diabetes for its study and asking how weight loss will affect their health. Presumably these people will be fully apprised of the undoubted health risks of dieting before they undertake the trials. The 12-year study, directed by Dr. Rena Wing at Brown Medical School and Dr. Xavier Pi-Sunyer at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital in New York, will be the largest study on weight loss ever conducted. Many studies have demonstrated that short-term weight loss has beneficial effects on risk factors such as high blood pressure and cholesterol; however, observational studies have raised concerns about negative effects of weight loss and weight cycling. Some of these studies suggest increased, not decreased, mortality; however, most cannot distinguish voluntary from involuntary weight loss. Dr. Jules Hirsch has long believed that fat people are different from people of normal weight and wishes his colleagues in the health professions would acknowledge this. "There is some sort of extraordinary genetic and environmental mix that has programmed people to be set for greater fat storage," he says. "For instance, you have two women who both weigh 130 pounds, but one used to weigh 200 pounds and one has always weighed 130. Medically, they are totally different same."
So finally, with this information being acknowledged and the experts in the field of obesity telling the world there are other factors to consider, that we are not all greedy and lazy and at risk of imminent death - will the world take notice? One would hope so. There are lives at stake here. |