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<DIV><FONT size=2>Part of the the costs of health care appear to be weight
related. In my opinion not enough attention/insistence on personal
responsibility has enetered the debate. The article below contains
findings that show the importance of taking responsibility for part of one's
overall health. There are many other findings relating diet and exercise
to overall health and consequently to the cost to all of us for health
care.</FONT></DIV><FONT size=2>
<DIV><BR>Wayne A. Fox<BR>1009 Karen Lane<BR>PO Box 9421<BR>Moscow, ID
83843</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><A href="mailto:waf@moscow.com">waf@moscow.com</A><BR>208 882-7975</DIV>
<DIV>_____________________________________________</DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=maintitle><B><FONT size=6>Study warns against extra
pounds</FONT></B></SPAN>
<P align=justify><SPAN class=abody><B><BR><BR>Even slightly excessive body
weight carries risks</B></SPAN><SPAN class=abody><B> <BR><BR>By Stephanie
Nano</B></SPAN><SPAN class=abody> <BR><BR>Associated Press</SPAN><SPAN
class=abody> <BR><BR>NEW YORK – Lugging around a few extra pounds? One of the
largest studies to look at health and weight finds that you don’t have to be
obese to raise your risk of premature death. Merely being overweight carries
some risk, too. Obesity increases the risk of death from heart disease, stroke
and certain cancers. But whether being merely overweight contributes</SPAN><SPAN
class=abody> to an early death as well has been uncertain and controversial.
Some research has suggested being a little pudgy has little effect or can even
be a good thing.<BR><BR>The latest research involving about 1.5 million people
concluded that healthy white adults who were overweight were 13 percent more
likely to die during the time they were followed in the study than those whose
weight is in an ideal range.<BR><BR>The study’s conclusions,
published</SPAN><SPAN class=abody> in today’s New England Journal of Medicine,
are similar to three other large studies, said the lead author, Amy Berrington
of the National Cancer Institute.<BR><BR>“Now there’s really a very large body
of evidence which supports the finding that being overweight is associated with
a small increased risk of death,” she said.<BR><BR>For their government-funded
analysis, the researchers pooled 19 long-term studies of mostly white adults.
They used each person’s body mass index – a measure of height and weight – and
checked</SPAN><SPAN class=abody> to see who died during the followup periods,
which ranged from five to 28 years.<BR><BR>They focused on people who were
healthy at the beginning of the studies, excluding smokers and those with heart
disease or cancer because those affect death rates and researchers wanted to see
the impact of weight alone.<BR><BR>The lowest death rate for healthy women who
had never smoked was in the high end of the ideal body mass index range –
between 22.5 and 24.9. Compared with that group, those who were</SPAN><SPAN
class=abody> overweight had an increased risk of death of 13 percent. The
increased risk ranged from 44 to 88 percent for those who were obese. The
morbidly obese were 2</SPAN><SPAN class=abody> 1⁄2</SPAN><SPAN class=abody>
<BR><BR>times more likely to die prematurely. The results for men were
similar.<BR><BR>Two-thirds of U.S. adults are either overweight or obese.
Overweight begins at a BMI measurement of 25, obese at 30 and morbidly obese at
40. A 5-foot-6 person is considered overweight at 155 pounds, obese at 186
pounds and morbidly obese at 248
pounds.<BR></SPAN></P><BR></DIV></FONT></BODY></HTML>