Junk Science Week: The obesity paradox

[Northerner]

Worried that you might have a fatal heart attack some day because your family history shows a tendency to heart disease? Maybe you should consider eating red meat to get your cholesterol up, or taking up smoking, or better yet, do both, and also acquire a couple of other well-known risk factors for heart attacks ? high blood pressure and diabetes.

This surmise ? the opposite of what you?d hear from your doctor ? follows from a startling study of mortality rates among 542,000 hospital patients who suffered their first heart attacks without having had previous cardiovascular disease. The more risk factors that a patient had, the study found, the better the chance of survival.

Someone with all five risk factors that the study looked at had only a 3.6% chance of dying in hospital after an initial heart attack. The chance of dying increased to 4.2% for people with just four risk factors, to 5.3% for those with three risk factors, to 7.9% for those with two risk factors and to 10.9% for those with one risk factor.

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2012/06/15/junk-science-week-the-obesity-paradox/

 

[trophywench]

That's because Diabetes makes you a stronger person. QED.


LOL

 

[Vicsetter]

I was told when I had my heart attack that having diabetes lessons the severity of a heart attack. Don't know the evidence, stats behind that one though, but works for me.