.....This lesson explores the strength of the scientific evidence supporting the relationship between increased weight and adverse health consequences. Health care providers receive a largely biased view of weight-related research throughout their professional education. The material that follows is provided to give the professional reader a more balanced knowledge base from which to draw conclusions about the validity of claims that obesity is a "chronic disease" and/or an important cause of premature morbidity and mortality.

Please click on the links for a detailed discussion related to each of the statements below.
 

The Concept of Ideal Weight  The conceptual basis of ideal weight comes from the height/weight tables which actually do not show a statistically significant linear relationship between increased weight and increased morbidity and/or mortality. The Challenges Facing Weight-Related Research  Weight-related research is fraught with methodological flaws and ethical limitations. The Evidence Related to Weight and Health  In over three decades of work, researchers have not clearly supported a direct, positive, and causal relationship between weight and morbidity/mortality.

SUMMARY & CONCLUSIONS:

1. The actual relationship between weight and health is unknown at present.

2. The available scientific evidence does not adequately support a causal relationship between increased weights and adverse health consequences.

3. As stated in a recent New England Journal Of Medicine editorial:

"the data linking overweight and death as well as the data showing the beneficial effects of weight loss, are limited, fragmentary and often ambiguous."³⁰

 

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© Fall 2001