Fat, drunk, and caffeinated is apparently a perfectly fine way to go through life.
A new study found that people who drink moderate amounts of alcohol or coffee and are overweight in their 70s tend to live longer than their counterparts. As ABC 7 Chicago reported, the study came from researchers at UC Irvine Institute for Memory Impairments and Neurological Disorders and showed what factors helped people live past the age of 90.
The study, which started in 2003, found that people who abstained from alcohol or coffee did not live as long as those who partook. People who were overweight also had an advantage over their thinner peers, the report noted.
This is not the first study to find that obesity may not be as detrimental to health as initially thought. Earlier this year, the scientific journal Clinical Obesity found that obesity on its own does not increase the risk of dying. Researchers at Madras Diabetes Research Foundation in Chennai, India, found that it was not unusual for someone to be overweight or even obese without suffering serious health side effects.
“We’re not saying that people should aim to get fat, only that some people who are overweight or obese may be perfectly healthy, metabolically,” researcher Ranjit Mohan Anjana, a diabetes specialist, told India’s Telegraph newspaper.
Anjana noted that people who are underweight may have their own health risks, as they “may lack vital nutrients, leading to complications, including death,” according to a report from the Times of India.
“Being underweight was associated with a significantly higher risk of all-cause mortality in the overall study cohort, whereas overweight and obesity were not,” the researcher said.
Another study from York University showed that people who are obese sometimes do not have a specific metabolic risk factor like elevated blood sugar or high blood pressure. As Science Daily reported, this study was seen as a potentially major development for the treatment of people suffering from obesity.
A different recent study showed that there could be a risk even greater than normal detrimental characteristics like smoking and obesity. As this study noted, anxiety and depression had a greater risk of developing serious health side effects like heart disease, arthritis, and stroke.
The study about the link between coffee, alcohol, and being overweight has generated quite a bit of national attention, due largely to the unexpected results. Many shared it on social media, though some questioned whether other factors — like the fact that many who suffer serious health problems in their 70s can lose weight as a result, potentially skewing the results — were at play.
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