Word: weighting
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...exactly excess weight would protect older adults is unclear, but the study's lead author, Leon Flicker, a professor of geriatric medicine at the University of Western Australia, offers a theory. "We can only hypothesize, but it may be that as we age, the presence of nutritional and metabolic reserves [that is, fat] are advantageous. If you develop an illness, a little more reserve gives you a greater chance to recover from that illness," he says...
...study has a few limitations, however. First, it used height and weight measurements that were reported by participants - which can be imperfect. (People tend to overestimate height and underestimate weight, which skews their BMI.) It also collected height and weight information only once, at the start of the study; researchers could not have known, for instance, whether people might have unintentionally lost weight before the study or during the follow-up as a result of underlying disease. Furthermore, the study's participants had a lower overall mortality rate than the general population, suggesting they were healthier to start with. Many...
...also point out that there is a difference between survival and quality of life. Being overweight is a major risk factor for many health problems, including Type 2 diabetes, hypertension, stroke, coronary disease, cancer and loss of physical function. "These are strong enough reasons to strive for a healthy weight and avoidance of obesity," says Dr. JoAnn Manson, a Harvard Medical School professor and chief of preventive medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital. "Moreover, given all of the adverse effects of obesity on health, it isn't biologically plausible that overweight would lower mortality risks...
Where researchers may agree is that BMI is an unreliable marker for body fat, or health, in the elderly. As people age, they lose muscle mass and bone density, which leads to weight loss and a declining BMI, despite an increase in body fat. Manson suggests measuring waist circumference instead, which is a more accurate gauge of abdominal obesity and tends to predict a higher risk of death in all age groups...
...risk and lots of other nonfatal conditions," says Flicker. But he adds that if you are among the population's successful agers, you are probably doing something right: "Having reached the age of 70 years, and you are overweight - not obese - there is no reason why you should lose weight, unless you have a condition that is associated with being overweight, such as diabetes mellitus or severe osteoarthritis...