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I believe evidence points towards absolute level of fat being more important than % for overall health. E.g. 20% bodyfat at 250lbs is still a lot of fat. Of c
by adam_arthur 2mo ago
I believe evidence points towards absolute level of fat being more important than % for overall health.
E.g. 20% bodyfat at 250lbs is still a lot of fat.
Of course it's difficult to ever get very high on absolute fat if at 15% or below.
- mathgeek 2mo agoNot sure I follow the logic here, but happy to be proven wrong if I'm misunderstanding. It's not intuitive to me that a 300 lb. person at 20% body fat is generally at the same risk as a 200 lb. person at 30% body fat.
- adam_arthur 2mo agoFat is inherently unhealthy for you beyond some low baseline level. Additional muscle is positive for health, but only up to some reasonable threshold. There is no health benefit to having very high levels of muscle, and in fact it may be negative for your health at extreme levels. E.g. many bodybuilders have trouble breathing, sleep apnea etc. Both people in the example have 60lbs of fat. 1lb of muscle doesn't cancel out the negative health effect of 1lb of fat
- sarchertech 2mo agoDo short people have much lower risk of heart disease?
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- plorkyeran 2mo agoSome are more common in short people and some are more common in tall people. Hypertension is one of the ones more common in short people and is significantly more common than the rest combined, so your overall chance of having some form of heart disease goes down as you get taller. However, the forms of cardiovascular disease more common in tall people (e.g. atrial fibrillation) are more likely to actually kill you.
- pandaman 2mo agoThe mean height for men at 20-29 is 69.2" and 80+ is 67.1" (measured in 2015-2018, the last data I've found) [1], which could be interpreted as shorter people having lower risk of all mortality. One could say that people are just getting taller over time and 80+ y.o. were shorter at their 20-29, but we also have the median height for 20-29 fro 1970s, when 2018's 80+ were 20-29 - it's actually 69.7" [2], men in the US are getting shorter over time, so unless people naturally shrink 2" with age the data points to shorter people having lower risk of death. 1. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_03/sr03-046-508.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_03/sr03-046-508.pdf 2. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/ad/ad347.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/ad/ad347.pdf
- sarchertech 2mo agoShort people have fewer incidences of cancer, so I don’t think you can say that lower overall risk of death implies lower risk of heart disease. As for 2, men in the US are getting shorter because of immigration which adds many confounders.
- pandaman 2mo agoI am not saying that. I am saying that the theory about absolute amount of fat being bad for health, as stated by the comment you responded, seems to be supported by data.
- sarchertech 2mo agoThat’s not the question I ask though. I asked about the specific claim that absolute fat was bad for your heart. But also short people living longer has so many more possible explanations than less overall fat.
- pandaman 2mo ago> I asked about the specific claim that absolute fat was bad for your heart. There is no word "heart" or any to this effect in the message you replied to so I did not understand that was what you were doing. I took your question as an attempt to attack the theory on the basis of prevalence of some heart conditions in shorter people.
- mathgeek 2mo agoLooking for some references on these claims, thanks! What you're saying registers as "makes some sense, but where's the evidence?" to me. I'm not seeing the connection where total lbs of fat is inherently worse than higher percentage.
- Noaidi 2mo agoYou won’t find any reference for those claims. Did you know that the majority of people who have heart attacks have normal lipid levels? It’s not the fat that kills. It’s oxidated lipids that kill.
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- lazyasciiart 2mo agoI haven’t heard that as a cause of heart attacks. Is “oxidated lipids” the phrase to look for in research?
- Noaidi 2mo agoYes. Rather, Oxidated LDL for heart disease specifically. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2451847625000661 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S24518...
- inglor_cz 2mo agoThe claim that fat is inherently unhealthy is probably too broad. From what I have heard from doctors, there is a clear sequence: intra-organ fat (really bad) > visceral fat (quite bad) > subcutaneous fat (relatively harmless). The nasty detail is that some people gain relatively more visceral fat than others. These three fats are correlated, but the correlation isn't the same in every human. Some have better metabolism and don't store as much fat inside as others do.
- numpad0 2mo agoDoes that have to do with sizes of the heart and few other organs apparently being largely constant regardless of height?
- andreareina 2mo agoDo you have a citation for that? I've had thoughts in a similar direction (specifically around the upper/lower intervention points) but have had no luck finding data.
- porknubbins 2mo agoIts not just absolute amount of fat though you also have to account for intra abdominal fat being much worse metabolically than subcutaneous fat.