Old may benefit from weight

Thursday January 28th, 2010

Some extra weight may be helpful for elderly people, researchers said today.

Someone over 70 who is "overweight" is more likely to survive for ten years than someone of supposedly healthy weight, according to Australian researchers.

Doctors said the findings suggest that so-called body mass index measures are "overly restrictive" for older people.

Professor Leon Flicker, of the University of Western Australia, said: "Concerns have been raised about encouraging apparently overweight older people to lose weight and as such the objective of our study was to examine the major unresolved question of what level of BMI is associated with the lowest mortality risk in older people.

"These results add evidence to the claims that the World Health Organisation BMI thresholds for overweight and obese are overly restrictive for older people.

"It may be timely to review the BMI classification for older adults."

Researchers studied more than 9,000 people in their 70s over a ten year period for the research published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

The findings showed that people who are little overweight had better survival chances than those of healthy weight - with a 13 per cent lesser risk of dying. This did not apply to those who were obese.

The conclusions applied to those who were apparently healthy at the beginning of the research as well as to those who already had chronic illnesses.

Researchers found that fitness was still important for health. Women who led sedentary lives faced a doubled risk of death whilst men faced a 25 per cent increased risk.

Flicker L, McCaul KA, Hankey GJ, Jamrozik K., Brown WJ, Byles JE, Almeida OP; Body Mass Index and Survival in Older Men and Women Aged 70 to 75 Years; The Journal of the American Geriatrics Society (2009); DOI: 0.1111/j.1532-5415.2009.02677.x

Tags: Diet & Food | Fitness | Geriatric Health | UK News

Printer friendly page