You might think from all the stories I’m reporting on that have to do with fatness that I’m some kind of fat fetishist, and that my pejorative tone betrays some deep psychological problem with fat people. Allow me to clarify – this blog reports on scientific progress as it relates to the quest for human improvement, transhumanism, immortalism, physical fitness, cognitive enhancement, and looking and feeling great 100% of the time.

I’m shocked and saddened on a daily basis at the intense ugliness of humanity that simply does not need to be. Fat people who refuse to lose weight, thin people who think that thinness alone is sufficient to look good (as opposed to thinness and a fit, muscular physique), people who proudly allow their acne to flourish (go to the dermatologist and GET AN ACCUTANE PRESCRIPTION FFS), etc.

So to the extent that these things could easily be rectified but persist due to the general inertia of people, I will continue to bitch and remind fatties of their impending premature death.

To that end, I now report on another study that correlates waist size as opposed to BMI alone as a marker for premature removal from the gene pool.

If you’re up-to-date with these things, it’s probably something you’ve heard before, but now the New England Journal of Medicine gives us further evidence that waist circumference is directly proportional to risk of death. In fact, the risk of premature death increased in an exactly linear fashion as the waist circumference increased of the study subjects, with each 5 cm raising the risk of mortality by 17% in men and 13% in women.

An increased risk of mortality may be particularly related to storing fat around the waistline because fatty tissue in this area secretes cytokines, hormones and metabolically active compounds that can contribute to the development of chronic diseases, particularly cardiovascular diseases and cancers, suggest the authors

Interestingly, with regard to BMI alone, the lowest risk of death occurred at a BMI of 25.3 for men and 24.3 for women.

I find this to be somewhat bizarre, as a BMI of 24 for a woman is actually pretty chunky (e.g., for a 5′4″ woman (162 cm), this corresponds to a weight of 140 lbs or 63.5kg!! Whereas, if we consider a BMI of about 18 to be ideal (your average model), the 5′4″ girl in question would weigh in at 47kg or 105 lbs. A difference of 16 kg on a 162 cm girl is significant indeed. One wonders if this is being reported correctly, and just goes to show that BMI is not a good indicator of, well, anything really.

A better metric is the waist-to-hip ratio:

Lower waist-hip ratios indicate that the waist is comparatively small in relation to the hips. The ratio is calculated by dividing the waist measurement by the hip measurement.

Waist to hip ratio varied quite widely in the European populations in the study. In 98 percent of the study population, waist to hip ratio ranged between 0.78 and 1.10 in men and between 0.66 and 0.98 in women. Within these ranges, each 0.1 unit higher waist-hip-ratio was related to a 34% higher mortality risk in men and a 24% higher risk in women.

This was a very large study, looking at 359,387 participants with a follow-up period of 9.7 years.

One wonders if the surprisingly high optimal BMI for reducing death risk was because the thinner people were thinner on account of their smoking. Not sure if that was taken into account, but it would perhaps explain the results.

Adapted from materials provided by Eurekalert.