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I got curious about this once and looked up the life expectancy of sumo wrestlers. It anyone is “fit but fat” it would be them. They have very high bmi’s, ~35.

• mrfusion 6y ago
  I’m confused how they have 26% body fat. That’s not all that much. Are you saying they are mostly muscle?
  • nvr219 6y ago
    Yep.
  • bagacrap 6y ago
    yeah it's surprising. But keep in mind they weigh at least twice a normal man, so they have about 4x the total fat of a healthy adult male (12% being close to what I consider ideal).
    • nkozyra 6y ago
      12% isn't really a sustainable bf% for most people.
  • bazooka_penguin 6y ago
    It's still overweight. For men the mid to high 10s is considered healthy.
    • thesz 6y ago
      The normal fat percentage range for men is 15..20%. 26% is overweight but not much. I once pulled up 27 times having 27-28% of fat being 38 years old, weighting 115 kg, which is about as much as I pulled up at my 18yo with 72 kg of body weight and god knows fat percentage (I had sixpack at the time, so it is 10% or less). 3% of fat is death low (thanks to Nazis to find that). To keep anything less than 10% for prolonged time takes very calculated effort or young age and high activity. It is very hard to go lower than 15% for normal men.
• mrfusion 6y ago
  As a corralary has anyone researched the longevity of bodybuilders? You’d think entering old age with a large surplus of muscle could be beneficial.
  • graeme 6y ago
    At the same time I looked into life expectancy of olympic athletes. Iirc it was higher across the board, but powerlifters had a lower boost compared to runners. https://theculturetrip.com/europe/united-kingdom/articles/athletes-who-play-these-sports-live-the-longest/ https://theculturetrip.com/europe/united-kingdom/articles/at... Edit: Fixed typo thanks. Also note that bodybuilders on steroids may not fall into the same group. One report found higher mortality below 50 this group.
    • AussieWog93 6y ago
      >Iirc correctly If I recall correctly correctly?
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
  • dehrmann 6y ago
    Powerlifters or weightlifters might be better because they don't cut to <5% body fat and steroid use is less common.
    • happyweasel 6y ago
      I think their hearts are way more under stress - they lift a lot more weight..
      • dehrmann 6y ago
        Since it's not like their hearts are overworked the same was with an obese person, I'm not sure if this would be a good thing or a bad thing.
• perardi 6y ago
  I don’t think professional athletes are a good population sample to map onto the general population. Athletes are highly incentivized to burn bright and flare out. Take NFL players. Yes, an obviously aggressive sport that lends itself to short careers…but even then, the average stint is 3.3 years. (https://www.statista.com/statistics/240102/average-player-career-length-in-the-national-football-league/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/240102/average-player-ca...) You will do anything, no matter how deleterious, to keep yourself in the game, damn the consequences. And by anything, I mean a steady diet of uppers, downers, and steroids.
  • graeme 6y ago
    I replied to another comment to say that olympic athletes actually live longer than average. NFl players aren’t a great example. That much traumatic brain injury is seriously harmful to health. Among olympic athletes, those in contact sports did less well. You do have a point as sumo is grueling and involves contact, but you wouldn’t expect hard playing to take off that much life expectancy all on its own. Sumo wrestlers surely lose some from adiposity. https://theculturetrip.com/europe/united-kingdom/articles/athletes-who-play-these-sports-live-the-longest/ https://theculturetrip.com/europe/united-kingdom/articles/at...
  • chongli 6y ago
    NFL players have another major issue that greatly shortens lifespans: CTE [1]. I wonder how much sumo wrestlers are affected by it. I could imagine it also being a problem due to the powerful impacts from their heavy bodies slamming against each other. [1] https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/chronic-traumatic-encephalopathy/symptoms-causes/syc-20370921 https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/chronic-traum...
  • jhowell 6y ago
    If I recall correctly the same is not true for professional cyclists [1], a sport with a rich doping history. They seem to live longer than the general population. I believe this is related to the impact on the body versus steroids. 1. https://www.cyclingweekly.com/fitness/cyclists-live-longer-asked-google-weve-got-answer-389628 https://www.cyclingweekly.com/fitness/cyclists-live-longer-a...
• kikokikokiko 6y ago
  I'm a sumo fan, and when you think about the daily routine these guys endure it's really amazing that even then it can't overcome their diet. They wake up at 5am, train for 5 hours in the morning, perform the domestic chores that the stable needs them to do, then come back in the afternoon for more 4 hours of training. E-VE-RY day. Other than some rare off season oportunities only the top wrestlers can get, that is it. And they still become diabetic and develop heart disease. There's no escape, other than having amazing genetics, if you eat like a pig, you die like one.
  • xnx 6y ago
    I've also heard it phrased as: You'll never outrun your fork.
• stjohnswarts 6y ago
  Of course BMI doesn't work for body builders. However only like 1% of the population work out enough to have muscle mass vs fat mass to actually make BMI "worthless" as so many people say. BMI is an "ok" way of determining if you're obese or not with 95-99% of the population. (at least in the USA). Lots of people just don't want to admit they're fat.
  • dogma1138 6y ago
    BMI works for body builders too, if you carrying 50kg> extra the body doesn’t care as much if it’s fat or muscle your heart still needs to support that body mass. BMI for people with very high body mass and low fat percentage can be adjusted slightly usually within 10-15% but if you are morbidly obese it’s going to be a problem either way. Going down from 96kg to 78kg while gaining some body fat from 9-10% to 12-13% reduced my RHR by about 10-15bpm. And that initial mass gain was just with a decade of exercise not the gain and shred cycles that body builders are going through not to mention the extra “vitamins” they tend take...
• cavisne 6y ago
  A good example of why BMI is actually a good indicator. Its a bit of a meme that when you weightlift BMI is inaccurate, but all excess body mass is somewhat unhealthy. Even most people who lift weights are too fat.
  • thesz 6y ago
    These weightlifters below all-inclusive weight category are pretty much not too fat. Look at deadlift records: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zxXQhSvGKY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zxXQhSvGKY Upwards 140 kg, there are fat people, but even Konstantinov (below 140kg)is not fat. Take look at him doing 55 pullups: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boLl8rGhJvE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boLl8rGhJvE The "most people who lift weights is fat" myth comes from watching too much competition in open-ended weight category (which, for weightlifting, starts at 109kg, I believe).
• dnhz 6y ago
  Sort of riffing on this subject, since rikishi are nearly all Asian: Asians are more vulnerable to diabetes than people of other ethnicities. Health authorities have recommended screening Asians with a BMI above 23 for diabetes. BMI, of course, is purely a function of weight and height. > limiting screening at BMI ≥25 kg/m2 would miss 36% of Asian Americans with newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes. In the same study, Araneta et al. (39) found that screening Asian Americans at a BMI cut point of ≥23.5 kg/m2 identified approximately 80% of those with undiagnosed type 2 diabetes. Among Japanese Americans, lowering the BMI screening cut point to ≥22.8 kg/m2 achieved 80% sensitivity. https://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/38/1/150 https://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/38/1/150 https://aadi.joslin.org/en/am-i-at-risk/asian-bmi-calculator https://aadi.joslin.org/en/am-i-at-risk/asian-bmi-calculator
• senectus1 6y ago
  my scales say i'm in the healthy rang for BMI, but unhealthy for fat and too much muscle mass... i can tell you i have a desk job and do NOT have too much muscle :-P
• tzs 6y ago
  How the fat is distributed is more important than how much there is. In sumo wrestlers almost all their excess fat is subcutaneous fat rather than visceral fat. Subcutaneous fat is much less harmful than visceral fat. There was a fair bit about this and sumo wrestlers on the excellent Nova episode "The Truth About Fat" last year [1]. Fat is much more complicated than most people realize, as is long term weight loss. It looks like the episode is available for free streaming [2] until the end of the month. It's worth it. [1] https://www.pbs.org/video/the-truth-about-fat-xnqm4i/ https://www.pbs.org/video/the-truth-about-fat-xnqm4i/ [2] PBS shows go in and out of free streaming. They can usually be streamed for free for about a month after they first air, then most of them become restricted to people who donate to their local PBS station. The restricted ones do pop back to free streaming for a while now and then, and certain episodes become free for years.
• m463 6y ago
  I remember someone telling me that as soon as sumo wrestlers stop wrestling, they immediately get diabetes.