A comprehensive review found that being out of shape greatly increased the risk of dying prematurely — regardless of age or body mass index.
Being in shape is far more crucial for a long, healthy life than being slim.
That’s the conclusion of the largest, most comprehensive study yet of the relationship between aerobic fitness, body mass index and longevity. A review and analysis of reams of earlier research, it found that being out of shape doubled or tripled the risk of dying prematurely, whatever someone’s age or body mass index.
On the other hand, if someone had obesity but was aerobically fit, he or she was about half as likely to die young as someone whose weight was normal but their aerobic fitness low.
“This tells us that it’s much more important, all things considered, to focus on the fitness aspect” of health and longevity “rather than the fatness aspect,” said Siddhartha Angadi, an exercise physiologist at the University of Virginia and the study’s senior author.
Cardiorespiratory fitness, body mass index and mortality: a systematic review and meta-analysis
Objective The purpose of this review was to assess the joint relationship of cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) and Body Mass Index (BMI) on both cardiovascular disease (CVD) and all-cause mortality risk.
Conclusions CRF is a strong predictor of CVD and all-cause mortality and attenuates risks associated with overweight and obesity. These data have implications for public health and risk mitigation strategies.
According to this research, you’re better off being overweight and fit (ACM HR: 0.96) than normal weight and fit (the reference group)! I think this says something about using BMI as a measure of body composition, rather than body fat percent or at least height/waist circumference ratio. And I don’t like a headline that implies that weight doesn’t matter, only fitness.
Exercise is great for longevity. I exercise daily, probably at a level considered vigorous for many but I’m fortunate enough that I can hit an elite level of METS on testing. I do worry that my brain will succumb to dementia long before my body deteriorates significantly. I take rapamycin primarily (and in hopes) that it slows my mental decline.
That is why in another thread, I emphasized brain exercise - because while we focus a lot on physical exercise and drugs, we don’t want to end up a long living body with a vegetating brain, this misses the whole point of longevity. I have highlighted some interventions which have shown to have extended benefits in brain aging, such as learning a new language, picking up an instrument, intellectually stimulating hobby (various research and learning domains), social interaction of higher quality (including online). By all means exercise your body. But don’t neglect exercising your brain! The earlier you start the better, but it’s never too late - just as with physical exercise.
I do lots of programming in SQL and C# in applying AI algorithms to the stock market. Not quite the “learning a new language” that you suggested, but hard on the brain.
Beyond BMI: New report reframes obesity as a spectrum of illness, not just a risk factor
Lancet commission downplays BMI and calls for ‘preclinical’ and ‘clinical’ categories of obesity
The body mass index is not going away, a new report suggests, but it could be demoted to just a first step in making a more nuanced diagnosis of obesity as a disease, one that distinguishes between what is and isn’t (yet) an illness requiring treatment.
A Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology global commission on clinical obesity published Tuesday acknowledges that BMI — the familiar metric derived from height and weight — may be useful as a screening tool before more medically relevant indicators, principally excess body fat, are called into play. BMI can tell us about the health of populations, but for the individual sitting in a primary care office, how their fat levels might be affecting organ function is much more telling.