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Originally Posted by mudgie
It's kind of stupid to attribute early deaths to obesity. Obesity doesn't bring about death; the things that cause obesity also cause diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and premature death. Obesity is merely one of the symptoms. Thank goodness for obesity and the cultural stigma... otherwise many would settle in their bad eating habits and die an early death. Obesity is merely the most unappealing outcome.
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This is the key. The studies and "experts" cited represent the confusion of finding the holy grail of health, in this case obesity. No epidemiologist can find a definitive root cause, only correlations. No epidemiologist can cite accurate and factual studies because they rely on questionnaires and loosely reported histories. Willett and Stokes are tiresome, but come off as very confident in their beliefs to the majority of the people reading their noise.
BMI? Wow! It's become the standard measurement of health and obesity assessment by the scientific and medical communities even though it flaunts confounding variables that must be taken into account. I read a recent paper that found that a higher BMI (whatever it represents) in older people is healthier. The beat goes on . . . .
The issue is a group of symptoms likely caused by the same condition and highly regulated by nutrition that point to the hypothetical root cause, Metabolic Syndrome and / or Insulin Resistance present the usual suspects of high blood pressure, obesity, type II diabetes, CVD, heart disease, cancer, GERD, skin problems, PCOS, IBS, sleep apnea, arthritis, and others. It's easier to focus on individual symptoms and label them diseases and develop drugs for mitigating them individually without really confirming the underlying root cause, just continuing to wave swords at windmills.
The good news is that there are some researchers and medical professionals who understand the stable of symptoms represent an underlying root cause and are developing methods and treating patients with this focus. The approach is encouraging in that simple dietary changes can have a huge effect on people presenting these symptoms, and many of us on this forum have made tremendous progress in correcting for these health issues. This is the good news, and it's starting at the grass-roots level with some experts and knowledgeable people leading the awareness and research movements. It will take some time, however, with articles like this citing those spouting the noise of unproductive points of focus.