Obesity vs. Overweight

(New York-WABC, November 6, 2007) (WABC) -- There is new information about being overweight versus being obese.

Seven's On Call with Dr. Jay Adlersberg.

There is a difference between obesity and simply being overweight, at least according to a report in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association.

Researchers found that with obesity, the more severe form of weight gain, comes with the risk of deadly diseases.

Researchers at Centers for Disease Control and Prevention use body mass index, or BMI, which is essentially weight divided by height squared, to define weight categories.

They define obesity as a BMI of 30 and above, overweight from 25 up to 30 and normal weight as 18.5 to 25.

It may be surprising that 26-year-old Brent Hagen fits the CDC's description of "overweight."

"I don't think of myself as overweight, and I don't think anyone that I know has ever thought of me as overweight either," he said.

But the CDC's Dr. Katherine Flegal says being her definition of over weight may have some health benefits.

"We found very different relationships between weight and different causes of death in the U.S. Population," she said.

The study found that obesity was linked to about 11 percent of deaths from a number of cancers, and obesity was associated with about 9 percent of cardiovascular deaths.

But overweight had no association with those deaths.

"About 40 percent of deaths in the U.S. population are due to causes that are neither cancer nor cardiovascular disease," Dr. Flegal said. "And then we found that overweight was associated with a significantly reduced number of deaths from those causes."

So overweight may have some protective effect.

"When you think of someone that's overweight, you think of someone who is visibly large," Hagen said. "You think of someone who is unhealthy, basically."

But using the study's definition of overweight may change that thinking.

It may be that overweight has benefits during adverse conditions, such as during an infection or a medical procedure.

It would not be healthy, however, to gain weight just to get these possible benefits.

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