A study done by the Japanese Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry has finally answered the age old question of who lives longer: overweight or skinny people. And according to them, although yes, it does suck to be overweight, at least for once there’s something good about it – you’ll live longer than skinny people. This study in no way endorsing that people should strive to be at any weight extreme – people should strive for a normal body weight – but according to the results it certainly looks like overweight people have a longer lifespan than their lighter counterparts.
The study was headed by Professor Ichiro Tsuji of the Tohoku University. Around 50,000 people who were between the ages of forty and seventy-nine were analyzed in this study. This was a long term study that took place over twelve years so researchers could see how long their research subjects lived after the age of forty. What they found was that people who were slightly overweight at age forty tended to live six to seven years longer than skinny people. People who were underweight at age forty tended to die five years earlier than more overweight people. Although the researchers hypothesized that skinny people would have a shorter lifespan, they were very surprised to find out exactly how many years less they had to live than overweight people. In addition, the study also found that even people who were obese (which, for the purposes of the study was defined as a BMI of 30 or more) lived around five years longer than people who were skinny (defined as a BMI of less than 18.5), which is definitely remarkable considering the health risks associated with being obese.
The study also found that overweight people tend to outlive people with normal weight. The researchers found that males that had a regular weight (defined as a BMI between 18.5 and 25) when they were forty years old lived on average until the age of 79 or so. On the other hand, males that were overweight (defined as a BMI from 25 to 30) actually lived until the age of 81 or so. Similar results were found for females.
Researchers have tried to come up with reasons to explain these results. Some postulate that many thin people smoke, which is definitely a factor that will shorten your lifespan. Others believe that skinny people are more susceptible to diseases and infections. However, they cannot explain why fat people live longer than people with a healthy body weight. At the end of the day researchers really don’t understand the connection between body weight and lifespan.
One thing is clear though – being fat is more expensive than being skinny. The study found that overweight people have more medical expenses than skinny people. An overweight person over the age of forty has probably spent anywhere between $158,000 and $193,000 on their medical care over the lifetime, which is a good 30% more than skinny people spend on the medical care.
This is a post by Tom Medalla from the life insurance website www.lifecover.ca. Tom lives in Vancouver, Canada and writes on a variety of topics, including personal finance, health, and nutrition.
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