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"A likely explanation for these findings is that weight loss can be an early prodromal indicator of the presence of various life-shortening diseases...The latter may include deaths from trauma, dementia, Parkinson disease..
Indeed. It recently came to my attention that a man in the community I hadn't seen for years has lost an impressive amount of weight. He used to be fat, now looks to be a more normal, healthy weight.
Unfortunately he otherwise looks terrible (facial expression) and walks quite slowly with a pronounced limp. When I asked someone "what happened to him?" the answer was Parkinson's.
My impression is that adults over about 70 are more likely to lose weight than gain , due to declining vitality or illness. Either way, it seems that the best prognosis is to enter your senior years at a healthy weight and maintain it there.
The study is nothing more than an association between extreme weight loss and sudden death. And as anyone can expect, terminal diseases one develops will lead to both sudden weight loss and death. This study is basically worthless.
If a study is not a clinical trial (this is a cohort study, done post hoc from another data set used in ASPREE trial), it's not worth your time. Post hoc analysis on data sets can get you to show anything you want based on how you play with the data. The proper trial is to randomize older and obese americans to either lose weight or maintain weight so the only difference between them is weight loss.
Sudden, UNintentional weight loss usually signals some kind of health issue regardless of your age, whether physical or mental. The older you are, the harder the toll such a drastic weight loss is on your health.
It is actually normal for older people to lose weight over time as their muscle mass decreases.
It has long been recognized that older adults who have 20 or 30 pounds extra pounds on them will have a better chance of recovering from an illness. They have more reserves to get their bodies through a bad spell.
I've known plenty of 60 and 70 somethings who exercise, diet and intentionally lose weight to make themselves feel and look better. As long as they aren't going on starvation diets or doing some sort of extreme fasting or ultimate body challenge, they should be just fine.
No, that's just your fat-hating interpretation of it.
Correct. I wouldn't want to be skin and bones in my old age. Those people are just not healthy. We don't see that much of that type of thing going on anymore but it still exists. And what springfieldva said is accurate. I'd much rather have a few extra pounds on me in my elderly years than be skin and bones. And I'm not interested in prolonging my life. I think a lot of people secretly agree with me though they won't admit it. With the way things are going I have no interest in living 30 more years. Both sides of my parentage lived to be a very old age and again I have no interest in that.
Is this another way to excusing and saying it is ok to be fat/obese???
I have been hearing a lot of that here as of late.
If anything, it might be seen as an attempt to deny the older population access to drugs like Ozempic which is being used off label for weight loss by people who do not have type 2 diabetes. I'm not sure if Medicare covers Ozempic or not. But if the weight loss associated with taking that drug can be deemed "an early death sentence" for older adults....what exactly will that mean.
If anything, it might be seen as an attempt to deny the older population access to drugs like Ozempic which is being used off label for weight loss by people who do not have type 2 diabetes. I'm not sure if Medicare covers Ozempic or not. But if the weight loss associated with taking that drug can be deemed "an early death sentence" for older adults....what exactly will that mean.
^^Interesting point.
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