Isn’t it better to be underweight to protect body from excess calories and reap the benefits of caloric restriction
The statistical reason for higher mortality rates for underweight people is it’s correlating with slip and fall injuries. Although thinner individuals have better longevity overall it’s also true that the more frail you are the more likely you are to hurt yourself (& the less likely you’re able to recover).
Firstly, it’s healthiest to be just the right weight. Not under. Not over.
Secondly, if you’re not eating enough the odds are extremely good that you’re not meeting your daily intake of various vitamins and minerals.
Third, you’re probably not getting enough protein to repair wear and tear on tissues, and not enough fat to facilitate numerous important functions in the body that keep things running smoothly.
Fourth, your body is likely pulling nutrients from other parts of your body to replenish its needs because it’s not getting its needs met with food. It’s performing triage, taking nutrients from important places to use it for more immediate needs. This catches up to you.
I mean what is the context of the question and what body fat are these high mortalities happening at? It could be that they’re suffering from anorexia and they’re damaging their organs. But I don’t know what the context is.
Being underweight is like having a boat with a-lot of holes in it, your body is missing key nutrients it needs to survive. Calcium, potassium, iron, etc. Being underweight you don’t have enough fuel to keep your body running so your body will eventually stop running.
The brain is literally made of fat, among other things. If one does not eat enough calories, the brain will not function optimally and this leads to people making poor decisions. Without a functioning brain, people make careless mistakes more frequently and and are more likely to die. It is too easy to not pay attention make careless mistakes, and get into a car acciden or fall off a ledge, or myriad other ways to die when the brain (and body) are not adequately nourished.
I think a lot of people here are confusing underweight and lean. Most people that are truly underweight lack access to a healthy and sustainable food source which causes malnourishment. Inherent in malnourishment is the lack of needed calories, vitamins, and minerals to thrive and be healthy.
A very large portion of people that are malnourished come from countries with food supply issues. These countries, in addition to having food supply issues, also tend to lack quality water access, quality medical care, etc. which isn’t ideal for longevity in general.
Because the space between normal weight and underweight that seems to prolong lifespan is merely a sliver. It isn’t some end all be all to health, but forcing your body to operate on a slightly less than optimal amount of calories, which allows you to live slightly longer than you might have at a normal weight. But only if you get that nutrition in an optimal way that allows you to consume a fewer than normal amount of calories. It doesn’t seem to be something you can accidentally yourself into, but something clinically forced as in the University of Wisconsin rhesus monkey study.
You’re going to be healthiest maintaining in the lower range of healthy BMI while simultaneously engaging in lots of aerobic and anaerobic exercise.
Dip below those calories, and you rapidly fall apart due to starvation. Your body breaks down fat and muscle, but as your overall composition of fat decreases, your body increasingly is catabolic to muscle, including your heart.
The waters are much murkier between normal weight and overweight and obesity.
Oh my lord this sub is something else 💀
You’re basically saying it’s fine for your body to not have the fuel it needs to function. Your brain is at 100% when you don’t give it enough calories, FUEL.
This sub should be deleted for the amount of pseudoscience it spreads
UT Southwestern did a longitudinal study and found calorie restriction over the lifespan in WOMEN resulted in longer lifespan. This was one study and it was small. How it plays out over a large population is unknown.
Your body needs, protein, fats and micronutrients to be healthy and survive. If you are underweight it’s likely you aren’t getting enough of them.
Also studies may be misleading, if just looking at current weight and mortality. This is because people who are sick lose weight, so in the lower weight categories you have people there because they are sick.
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>Use of maximum BMI reveals that estimates based on BMI at the time of survey may substantially underestimate the mortality burden associated with excess weight in the US.
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>https://pophealthmetrics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1478-7954-12-6
A lot of “underweight” people that die started normal weight and wasted away with diseases before they actually died. Others fell in older age and didn’t have the padding of fat to prevent as much injury. Those two things cover most of the underweight extra deaths in statistics.
It’s an interesting question. Certainly studies show higher mortality from being under and significantly over weight (slightly overweight not really). However it must be considered that studies on this if not carefully structured could be misleading. simply put many people who are ill can become underweight ie the reason they die isn’t because they were underweight originally but they became underweight from the illness that subsequently killed them. A similar effect comes through smoking which also tends to reduce weight but at the same time people likely die from lung cancer say rather than being underweight.
So if you are healthy but possibly in the “underweight” category you may not have higher mortality.
Underweight people lack fat to protect the body from free radicals and toxins. Toxic substances when in the body store in fat.. They have no fat for toxins to store so that toxin goes through the body causing cellular damage and most likely will store in the brain because this is where all the fat is on a skinny person. Toxic accumulation in the brain leads to early death.