(no subject)

[stakebait]

Connecticut now has same-sex civil unions! Yay!

Unfortunately, the Texas house passed a ban on gay foster parents -- not to mention the poor transsexuals, who get lumped in here for no reason I can figure -- and Microsoft pulled its support for a gay rights bill. But hey, accentuate the positive.

(Thanks to liberalrage for the first and last links, and many, many folks for the second).

An article on the new exercise recommendations, and the relationship between exercise, weight, and health. Among other things, it mentions that physically fit obese people have much lower death rates than physically unfit normal weight people. Also, people who are overweight but not obese have lower health risk than normal weight. Not that that helps me, but it does explain the folk wisdom that a little extra weight is healthy.

Comments

[chicken-cem.livejournal.com]

As important as the rights are, this is not yet equality.

*sigh* I'm just happy to be moving to Massachusetts, where my marriage will be completely legal!

The weight stuff is interesting -- I think as in all things, humans should seek a happy medium, neither anorexic nor obese, but somewhere in the middle, pleasingly plump.

[seerinc.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but the problem is what the government considers to be obese.
I am considered to be obese by BMI standards.

The only fat on my is my gut. And the government/health studies like to state that when a man goes over the 40" waist mark- there's no turning back.

Im gonna go eat a box of ho-ho's and cry now. LOL

Seriously though... They need to get away from the BMI scale and go to the body fat index. Its alot more revealing.

[dragovianknight.livejournal.com]

Who has an extra 90 minutes a day to work out? It'd be nice if these gov't thinkers remembered that some of us work more than one job.

[meko00.livejournal.com]

Oh, the BMI is misleading. Still, 30 mins of exercise and healthier food can do wonders for your physical fitness if not for your actual weight. Of course, I'm within my BMI, so I suppose it's easy for me to say. My cholesterol is too high (hereditary thing), and I was told by one of my doctors that just exercising 30 mins three times a week was better than nothing, so I guess that would be true for you US people, too.

[chaos-wrangler.livejournal.com]

G & I saw the weight story on TV and I kept muttering "no..." and "but..." and "duh..." and such.

Start with the apparent ignorance of the difference (or even that there is a difference) between correlation and causation. Does being overweight* cause better health or just correlate with it?

Or does it depend on the person? Someone who weighs a few "extra" pounds and doesn't spend all their time worrying about their weight is going to be more healthy mentally/emotionally than someone who is "normal"** weight-wise and constantly freaking out. Since mental/emotional health often correlates with and (for at least some people) contributes to physical health...


*When does it switch from being "good" overweight to being "bad" overweight - at the line between "overweight" and "obese"? I don't think so, but no article/report that I've seen/heard has been clear on this.

**I was also irked by this categorization, which seemed to be coming straight from the study. I don't think that's the right word for what they're talking about, since the average weight it higher than "normal", as they keep reminding us with the obesity stats.

[doeeyedbunny.livejournal.com]

Yay Connecticut!

Any word on residency requirements?