Scarlet Epsilon: Is Being Overweight Really Bad For You?

Is Being Overweight Really Bad For You?

Heart Disease Risk Factor: Being Overweight or Obese by The Heart Truth
License (according to Flickr): United States Government Work

Excerpt:

Being overweight may not be a bad thing when it comes to lowering your risk of death, a new review suggests. (Getty Images) If your New Year's resolution is to lose those last few pounds that are keeping you out of your skinny jeans, a new review suggests you may want to think twice. The research reinforces a counterintuitive point that past studies have suggested -- being a bit on the heavy side may actually cut your risk of dying prematurely. In the review, published in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers looked at nearly 100 studies involving 2. 88 million people that compared body mass index, or BMI, to the risk of death from any cause. BMI is derived from a formula that compares your height to your weight.

Keywords:

People:

Flegal

Overall Sentiment: -0.217823

Relevance: 0.755333

Sentiment	Quote
-0.0962752	"We found that being overweight in that study was not associated with excess mortality from cardiovascular disease or cancer, but it reduced mortality from other things," Flegal said. ...
-0.0868212	"We found that being overweight in that study was not associated with excess mortality from cardiovascular disease or cancer, but it reduced mortality from other things," Flegal said. "There's even some research that suggests body fat itself could be cardioprotective."
-0.42495	"These are not health categories, these are weight categories," Flegal said. ...
Sentiment Stats:	Number of Quotes: 3 Aggregate Sentiment: -0.6080464 Mean: -0.20268213333333 Standard Deviation: 1.4142135623731

Katherine Flegal, Ph.D.

Overall Sentiment: 0.447094

Relevance: 0.48435

Dr. David Katz

Overall Sentiment: 0.101246

Relevance: 0.387941

Key:

Aggregate Sentiment is meant to be an indicator of an individual's overall sentiment.
The Mean is meant to be an indicator of an individual's average comment sentiment.
The Standard Deviation, when there are enough quotes, will indicate an individual's consistency of sentiment (i.e. a Standard Deviation of 0 would mean they were very consistent in their sentiment and 1 would mean they were very inconsistent).

Note that quote stats are likely to be meaningless beyond the aggregate score due to the tiny sample size. However, they are always provided just in case you find something useful there.

Additional Info:

HealthCondition: obesity

Overall Sentiment: -0.276113

Relevance: 0.494345

HealthCondition: cardiovascular disease

Overall Sentiment: -0.492887

Relevance: 0.35823

Disambiguation: DiseaseReferences:

HealthCondition: heart disease

Overall Sentiment: -0.345425

Relevance: 0.345507

Disambiguation: DiseaseOrMedicalCondition | CauseOfDeath | RiskFactor | Disease | OrganizationSectorReferences:

Organization: Yale University's Prevention Research Center

Overall Sentiment: 0.412163

Relevance: 0.392446

Organization: American Medical Association

Overall Sentiment: 0

Relevance: 0.380617

Disambiguation: PeriodicalPublisherReferences:

Organization: National Center for Health Statistics

Overall Sentiment: 0.0298234

Relevance: 0.301666

Holiday: New Year

Overall Sentiment: -0.396771

Relevance: 0.43816

Scarlet Epsilon

Friday, February 1, 2013

Is Being Overweight Really Bad For You? | Reduction