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by mathgeek11 hours ago |
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upvoteby adam_arthur11 hours ago|
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Fat is inherently unhealthy for you beyond some low baseline level.

Additional muscle is positive for health, but only up to some reasonable threshold. There is no health benefit to having very high levels of muscle, and in fact it may be negative for your health at extreme levels. E.g. many bodybuilders have trouble breathing, sleep apnea etc.

Both people in the example have 60lbs of fat. 1lb of muscle doesn't cancel out the negative health effect of 1lb of fat

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upvoteby mathgeek10 hours ago|
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Looking for some references on these claims, thanks! What you're saying registers as "makes some sense, but where's the evidence?" to me. I'm not seeing the connection where total lbs of fat is inherently worse than higher percentage.
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upvoteby Noaidi10 hours ago|
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You won’t find any reference for those claims. Did you know that the majority of people who have heart attacks have normal lipid levels?

It’s not the fat that kills. It’s oxidated lipids that kill.

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upvoteby lazyasciiart4 hours ago|
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I haven’t heard that as a cause of heart attacks. Is “oxidated lipids” the phrase to look for in research?
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upvoteby 8 hours ago|
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upvoteby sarchertech11 hours ago|
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Do short people have much lower risk of heart disease?
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upvoteby pandaman8 hours ago|
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The mean height for men at 20-29 is 69.2" and 80+ is 67.1" (measured in 2015-2018, the last data I've found) [1], which could be interpreted as shorter people having lower risk of all mortality. One could say that people are just getting taller over time and 80+ y.o. were shorter at their 20-29, but we also have the median height for 20-29 fro 1970s, when 2018's 80+ were 20-29 - it's actually 69.7" [2], men in the US are getting shorter over time, so unless people naturally shrink 2" with age the data points to shorter people having lower risk of death.

1. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_03/sr03-046-508.pdf

2. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/ad/ad347.pdf

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upvoteby sarchertech6 hours ago|
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Short people have fewer incidences of cancer, so I don’t think you can say that lower overall risk of death implies lower risk of heart disease.

As for 2, men in the US are getting shorter because of immigration which adds many confounders.

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upvoteby pandaman5 hours ago|
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I am not saying that. I am saying that the theory about absolute amount of fat being bad for health, as stated by the comment you responded, seems to be supported by data.
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upvoteby TylerE3 hours ago|
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People do tend to shrink in height quite a bit at advanced age.

https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/003998.htm

"People typically lose almost one-half inch (about 1 centimeter) every 10 years after age 40. Height loss is even more rapid after age 70. You may lose a total of 1 to 3 inches (2.5 to 7.5 centimeters) in height as you age."

So people DO in fact tend to lose about 2 inches at age 80 versus their younger selves.

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upvoteby plorkyeran10 hours ago|
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Some are more common in short people and some are more common in tall people. Hypertension is one of the ones more common in short people and is significantly more common than the rest combined, so your overall chance of having some form of heart disease goes down as you get taller. However, the forms of cardiovascular disease more common in tall people (e.g. atrial fibrillation) are more likely to actually kill you.
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upvoteby 11 hours ago|
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upvoteby 11 hours ago|
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