It's okay to be fat?

Would you believe this?

Reuters reports:

According to a Canadian study,a few pounds appear to protect people from an early death.So this would certainly be happy news to many who are out there carrying that little extra weight.

Apparently, researchers have found out that while underweight and extremely obese people die earlier than people of a normal weight, people who are slightly overweight actually live longer than those of a normal weight.

These findings of a new study were published online in the journal Obesity by researchers at Statistics Canada, Kaiser Permanente Centre for Health Research, Portland State University, Oregon Health & Science University, and McGill University.

“It’s not surprising that extreme underweight and extreme obesity increase the risk of dying, but it is surprising that carrying a little extra weight may give people a longevity advantage,” said researcher David Feeny from the Kaiser Permanente Centre for Health Research.

But fellow researcher Mark Kaplan, professor of Community Health at Portland State University has added a caveat to this. He is of the view that while a few extra pounds may protect older people as their health declines, that did not mean people of normal weight should try to bulk up.

He indicated that the study only looked at mortality and not at quality of life,reminding that there are many negative health consequences associated with obesity, including high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes.

The study was based on examining the relationship between body mass index and death among 11,326 adults in Canada over a 12-year period using data from the National Population Health Survey.

During the study period, from 1994/1995 through 2006/2007, underweight people were 70 per cent more likely than people of normal weight to die, and extremely obese people were 36 per cent more likely to die.

But overweight individuals were 17 per cent less likely to die. The relative risk for obese people was nearly the same as for people of normal weight.

The researchers said this was the first large Canadian study to show that people who are overweight may actually live longer than those of normal weight.

An earlier study, conducted in the United States and published in 2005 in the Journal of the American Medical Association, showed similar results.