Exercise Decreases Risks of Obesity

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Study Backs Exercise Above Weight

By EMMA ROSS

..c The Associated Press

LONDON (July 17) - Obese people who exercise have half the death rate of

those who are trim but don't exercise, a leading expert said Tuesday.

Previous studies linking obesity and death from heart disease and other major

killers have missed the important influence of exercise, said Blair,

director of research at the Institute for Aerobics Research in Dallas.

''There is a misdirected obsession with weight and weight loss,'' he told a

meeting of the Association for the Study of Obesity in London. ''The focus is

all wrong. It's fitness that is the key.''

However, some experts cautioned that reaching an appropriate weight is still

advisable for preventing other complications of obesity that are not thought

to be related to fitness, such as cancer, arthritis and infertility. The

ideal is still trim and fit, they said.

''When you look at the data and the number of subjects he's studied and you

recognize that Steve is an excellent scientist, I think nobody would say the

data are flawed,'' said Dr. Jebb, director of the Human Nutrition Unit

at Cambridge University in England.

''I think that's good news for people who are overweight because it kind of

gives them two options. You don't have to lose weight. You can instead

improve your fitness,'' she said. ''However, the reality is that both of

those are quite tough challenges. The question is just how many people do

manage the level of fitness that he is showing is beneficial?''

Blair said that about 50 percent of the obese people in his studies were fit.

It is unclear how that compares with the rate of fitness among obese people

in the general population.

The studies involved 25,000 middle-aged men and about 8,000 women who were

followed for 10 years. Fitness was measured by a standard stress test - how

long people could walk on a treadmill at increasing intensity before becoming

exhausted.

The bottom 20 percent of the group were considered unfit.

The findings were the same whether obesity was measured by a body mass index

(derived by multiplying a person's weight in pounds by 703 and dividing that

result by height in inches squared), or by the percentage of body fat

relative to muscle and bone, which meant the results were not due to heavy

people simply being well muscled, Blair said.

People with a body mass index of 30 or more are considered obese.

The United States leads the world in population of overweight men and women.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 61 percent

of Americans are overweight and 26 percent are obese, or grossly overweight.

Blair said 30 minutes of moderate walking every day, at three or four mph,

would make most obese people fit.

''To put yourself in our top fitness category, you might walk more vigorously

and add a couple of games of tennis at the weekends,'' he said.

Some other fitness experts recommend 60 minutes a day of exercise for health.

''I don't mean it eliminates the risk of everything, but you can stay

overweight and obese if you are fit and be just as healthy, in terms of

mortality risk, as a lean fit person,'' Blair said. ''When they talk about

the health risks of obesity, they usually talk about heart disease, diabetes

- the big killers.''

''We have also looked at disease rates, particularly diabetes. The phenomenon

holds there too that the obese individuals who are fit develop diabetes at

about the same rate as the lean individuals who are unfit,'' he said.

People might still want to shed pounds for other reasons - so that they can

fit more comfortably into an airline seat or to stop others discrimination,

Blair said.

''I'm inclined to agree with that. I don't think that carrying around a lot

of fat, in itself, is necessarily detrimental because a number of large

people are very vigorous,'' said E. Blundell, chair of psychobiology at

the University of Leeds in England.

''Thin and active is probably the optimal because that way you are no longer

a target of the culture, you don't receive that psychological damage of being

stigmatized,'' he said.

AP-NY-07-17-01 1458EDT