Sandy Szwarc is an editor and a prolific writer on food, health and science issues for various print and internet media. She is also a registered nurse with a science degree from the University of Texas at Austin, and over twenty years in critical-care nursing, emergency triage, and medical outreach education with a focus on nutrition, weight and eating issues, and preventative health. Ms. Szwarc is a leading advocate in debunking junk science as it pertains to food and health, and she is currently completing an upcoming book entitled “The Truth About Obesity and Dieting-Dangers and Good News We’re Never Told.”
In this Tech Central Station op-ed, Ms. Szwarc takes dead aim at the junk science industry and the mainstream media for providing muddled information to the public regading the health risks of obesity:
Consumers were left more confused than ever when the media reported on two obesity-related studies from the Journal of the American Medical Association last week. One seemed to find it was more important to be fit than thin for your heart health; the other that it was more important to be thin than fit to prevent diabetes . . .
But in fact, the controversy has already been repeatedly answered in the scientific literature. The trouble is, it’s not what a lot of people want to hear…and others without science backgrounds don’t realize.
These side-by-side JAMA studies provided an invaluable opportunity for the media to help consumers sort through medical information and come away with a very important message: not all studies are created equal.
Ms Szwarc goes on to explain how some medical researchers are misleading the public with spurious conclusions drawn from “dredge data research,” and that the conclusions of such studies are of dubious merit:
Sadly data dredge studies are increasingly being misused and misinterpreted. Most noteworthy is that [the Weinstein study correlating obesity with diabetes] findings contradict many stronger clinical and epidemiological studies that have found that exercise reduces type 2 diabetes and improves insulin resistance, unrelated to weight.
For example, researchers at the Cooper Institute in Dallas, Texas led by Timothy S. Church, MD, PhD, followed over 2,000 diabetics for 25 years, using a range of health assessments, including treadmill tests to gauge their fitness levels. They found that premature deaths from all causes were significantly lower among the fit. Weight was irrelevant. Researchers at the Veterans Affairs, Palo Alto Health Care System, Stanford University studied over 6,000 men for six years and found exercise capacity was more important in risks of dying than “known” risk factors including obesity, cholesterol, hypertension, smoking and even diabetes. Even a small clinical study at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada following 54 obese women found daily exercise, without dieting or weight loss, substantially reduced insulin resistance in just 14 weeks.
In the mainstream media’s rush to embrace the American delusion that a svelte physique equates with good health, Ms. Szwarc points out that the media ignores scientifically proven reality:
Most significant, [another recent study] is just one of dozens of clinical studies over decades which have found the exact same thing in men and women: when fitness is considered, weight is irrelevant to long-term health, heart disease, diabetes or premature death from all causes.
The list is too extensive to cite here, but clinical studies concluding ‘fitness not weight is what counts’ include the Harvard Alumni Health Study of 12,516 men followed for 16 years; the St. James Women Take Heart Project of 5,721 women studied for 8 years; and the Aerobics Center Longitudinal Study, an ongoing study that includes 25,389 patients examined at the Cooper Clinic in Dallas from 1970 to 1989. Even the Women’s Health Study published findings in 2001 that found merely light to moderate activity was dramatically associated with lowered heart disease in women, including those who were overweight, had high cholesterol or smoked.
Ms. Swzarc concludes by pointing to a recent op-ed by two researchers at the Dallas-based Cooper Institute, which has an outstanding record of performing landmark research on fitness and preventative health:
[Drs. Blair and Church, the Cooper researchers] chastised today’s obesity researchers, saying that “failure to adequately quantify physical activity when examining the risks of obesity is similar to exploring risk factors for cancer and misclassifying tobacco use.”
Drs. Blair and Church emphasized that death rates and heart disease among obese people, with just moderate fitness, are half that of “normal” weight people who aren’t fit. The amount of exercise to attain this health-giving level of moderate fitness isn’t much, either, and has been proven in 24 clinical studies: it’s merely 150 minutes of moderate-intensity activity a week. They say that’s equivalent to 30 minutes, 5 times a week of: walking, gardening, housework, bicycling, swimming or other activities enjoyed in daily life.