X-Message-Number: 10571
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1998 06:46:57 -0400 (EDT)
From: Ben Best <>
Subject: Fitness versus Fatness, one last time

> Message #10566
> Date: Sun, 11 Oct 1998 11:39:00 -0400
> From: Jan Coetzee <>
> Subject: More on Fitness versus Fatness 
> References: <>
> 
> Ben, the truth of the matter is one can only increase the life span of
> mice if one restrict them during development. The equivalent would be to
> restrict the quantity (not quality) of food in a human for their first ~
> 20 years of life. After the first 20 years it really does not  matter.
> Maybe you know of an experiment where they only used so to speak adult
> mice to start with. This my opinion.

    I intend for this to be my last comment on this, because I don't
intend to contribute to the use of CryoNet for the purpose of non-cryonics
issues. Rather than re-hash issues which have been discussed and resolved
many times elsewhere, I'll just give a few references and leave it at
that.

    One of Dr. Weidruch's first notable contributions to the study of
caloric restriction with adequate nutrition was his demonstration that the
procedure works with adults. Read about it in the book THE RETARDATION OF
AGING AND DISEASE BY DIETARY RESTRICTION by Roy Walford and Richard
Weidruch. The issue has also been discussed and documented in the
CRSOCIETY and the CRAN mailing lists, if you have the patience to sort
your way through: 

              http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~frienkel/crs/index.htm
              http://www.benbest.com/CRAN

     An excellent review of the epidemiologic data concerning obesity
and mortality can be found in the AMERICAN JOURNAL OF CLINICAL NUTRITION
66(suppl):1044S-1050S (1997). It acknowledges the direct associations 
between obesity and diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidemia,
and ischemic heart disease, as well as cancers (prostate and colorectal in
men, endometrial, ovarian, cervical, breast and gallbladder in women),
etc. For men who have never smoked there is a direct association between
risk of cancer and weight (ie, the lightest have the lowest, increasing
to the heaviest with the highest). 

   Many studies, such as the one cited by Douglas, do not correct for 
underlying disease. Such corrections are absolutely essential to 
demonstrate the direct correlation between leanness and longevity. There
is absolutely no question that many diseases result in leanness and 
wasting of body tissue and that it may take years to become evident 
that the disease caused the leanness. It is only the most careful
epidemiologic studies which have made this correction.

   Which is not to say that fitness AND leanness are not a better 
combination than leanness alone. BMI only measures kilograms per
square metre, and does not distinguish between a heavy muscular
person and a heavy fat person. So combining BMI with fitness is
necessary to make the distinction. It hardly seems like a clever
scientific discovery to say that muscular people are more healthy
than fat people of the same weight. This does not prove that fitness 
is more important than fatness. 

   Two people have asked me in private e-mail for the reference on
my statement that dieters on high quality low-calorie protein diets
have lower death rates than obese controls. See JOURNAL OF THE 
AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION 270:967-974 (1993).

   I appreciate Douglas' citations on cryonics-related issues to
cryonet. I request that he restict his postings on this list to
cryonics-related issues and post his material on other topics to
the appropriate newsgroups. 

         --------------------------------------------
            Ben Best ()
            http://www.benbest.com/
            ICQ -- http://www.mirabilis.com/20636141

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=10571