Being fat actually ups life expectancy, doctor says

Mar 1, 2013 21:11 GMT  ·  By

Those who put down “losing weight” as one of their New Year's resolutions might want to rethink their list after reading what one doctor has to say about the health benefits of being plump.

Long story short: Achim Peters, who happens to be an obesity expert now working with the Luebeck University in northern Germany, is quite convinced that overweight people are likely to outlive their skinner friends and relatives.

As this doctor explains, this is because the brains of overweight individuals receive better nourishment whenever they find themselves in stressful circumstances.

On the other hand, the brains of thin people are more often than not left with no choice except getting the nutrients they need from muscles and organs, something which can easily translate into the individuals developing various life-threatening medical conditions.

“When the brain doesn't get them from external sources, it gets them from within - from muscles and even worse, from the organs. Thin stressed people are the least healthy people,” Achim Peters argues.

According to Daily Mail, this German obesity expert maintains that, all things considered, being overweight might in fact be healthier than compelling one's brain to take up the habit of “feasting” on muscles and organs.

“People react to a stressful, uncertain circumstances in two different ways. Some eat and become fat. The others refuse food and become thin. The ones who become really ill are the thin ones. The fat ones are, in comparison with the thin ones, much healthier,” doctor Achim Peters says.

Furthermore, “We have to worry much more about the thin stressed people than about the fat stressed people. Yet they are not regarded widely as having a problem precisely because they are thin. But in fact they die earliest.”

The same source informs us that, as far as this German doctor is concerned, the most common stress factors individuals have to face throughout their lives are lack of money, various forms of abuse, low self-esteem and issues having to do with one's love life.