Take It Easy, Gramps! Those Extra Pounds May Not Be So Harmful

Contrary to what Americans have been told for years, people may be doing themselves a favor by putting on a few pounds as they grow older, a leading federal researcher says.

Standard insurance industry tables listing ideal weight ranges for men and women are too high for young adults, about right for middle-aged people, and too low for those 50 and older, said Dr. Reubin Andres, clinical director of the National Institute on Aging’s Gerontology Research Center in Baltimore.

“Essentially, everyone agrees that there are lower and upper limits to the best body weights,” Andres, in San Diego Wednesday for lectures at UC San Diego, said in an interview. “The debate comes over whether age influences what the ranges should be.”

The basic conclusion that Andres has reached from his research--that the weight range associated with lowest mortality increases with age--does not represent a consensus among gerontologists, Andres admits. Many agree with him that weight tables must take age into account, but they are unconvinced that Andres has the correct answers, in part because the many variables involved with “ideal weights” are difficult to boil down to specific numbers.

In laying down his hypothesis, Andres said that, for years, the medical profession gospel has been that a person should be lean as a young adult and maintain that shape throughout life. “The belief is that any weight you add after your (young adult) years is not only ugly but dangerous,” he said. “And that makes a lot of sense. Fat can do a lot of bad things to you: At some level it’s associated with diabetes, cholesterol, hypertension, gout, gall bladder problems, etc.”

The standard weight and height tables have been compiled for years by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. of New York, based on numerous large-scale population studies that classify people into age groups and obesity levels, then follow their weight patterns until they die. The tables are then mathematically adjusted to come up with the weight ranges associated with lowest mortality.

The tables set up separate weight ranges for men and women based on height and body frame. The ranges do not account for age, remaining the same for the 25-year-old to 59-year-old span covered by Metropolitan Life.

But Andres said he was bothered by the tables’ applying the same standards to older people that they do to younger people. To do so is to ignore the physiological aging process, he said.

Andres looked at the same data used by the insurance industry and calculated that weight values must be adjusted for age. His tables show, on the average, that the weights at the bottom and top ranges are a pound more a year after age 40 than those in the Metropolitan tables. In contrast, they are a pound a year less for those under 40, he said.

“We are debating limits (of the ranges),” Andres said, sensitive to criticism that obesity, however defined, shouldn’t be encouraged. “Everyone agrees that some amount of fat is a killer. But by the same token, we know that some degree of leanness is dangerous, since we have lower limits on desirable weights as well.”

Andres said that his conclusions have predictive meaning statistically, in that a person is more likely to develop health-related problems if his weight falls outside the weight range for his particular age group. He said that such problems appear to be more significant for younger people than for older people.

“The strength of the hazard appears to decrease with age,” Andres said.

But scientists have no precise medical explanations for what the statistical data shows. Andres said that such studies have not been considered important because no one believed that a weight gain could be beneficial in old age.

Andres cautions that such variables as quality of life, nutrition and a host of others affect how a person should approach any weight table.

“Weight tables should be used as guides only by people in good health in consultation with their doctors,” Andres said.

“And it is important to understand that there always is some uncertainty in all tables. The important factor is the range.”