Higher Percent Of Body Fat May Be Linked To Higher Risk Of Dying Early, Study Suggests.

reports that when the researchers “looked at how body fat correlated with early death,” they “found that people with the lowest BMI had a 44% to 45% higher risk of dying early – likely because they were malnourished or otherwise ill – than those with more average BMI.” Individuals “with the highest body fat composition, regardless of their BMI, also had the highest risk of dying early – women with more body fat showed a 19% increased risk of early death while men had a 60% higher risk of mortality.” http://time.com/4250021/why-bmi-doesnt-tell-you-how-healthy-you-are/ n one study published Monday, researchers found that in a group of more than 1.5 million Swedish military recruits, men who had poor physical fitness at age 18 were three times more likely to develop Type 2 diabetes in midlife than were those who had been highly fit on the cusp of adulthood. That effect was found independent of BMI, family history or socioeconomic status. Muscle strength and, especially, aerobic capacity of males at age 18 were highly predictive of developing Type 2 diabetes in their 50s or 60s, the authors of the study found. Even men with BMIs that pegged them as "normal healthy weight" in their 50s or 60s were far more likely to develop diabetes if they had shown poor level aerobic conditioning and muscle strength at 18. Researchers are nurturing a growing suspicion that body mass index, the height-weight calculation that distinguishes those with "normal healthy weight" from the overweight and obese, is not the whole picture when it comes to telling who is healthy and who is not. Two new studies drive that point home and underscore that BMI offers an incomplete picture of an individual's health. Fitness matters, as does fatness. And the BMI is an imperfect measure of both. http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-age-fitness-matters-20160307-story.html