Being overweight may not be as unhealthy as it was 40 years ago," BBC News reports.
New research has found a body mass index (BMI) of 27 is linked to the lowest rate of death – but someone with a BMI of 27 is currently classed as being overweight.
BMI is a score calculated by dividing your weight (usually in kilograms) by the square of your height (usually in metres and centimetres). Currently, a BMI of 25 to 29.9 is classified as being overweight.
Researchers looked at 120,528 people from Copenhagen, recruited from 1976 to 2013, and separately compared those recruited during the 1970s, 1990s and 2000s. They were followed up until they died, emigrated, or the study finished.
The BMI linked to the lowest risk of having died from any cause was 23.7 in the 1970s group, 24.6 in the 1990s group, and had further risen to 27 in the 2003-13 group.
It may be the case that the suggested upward shift in optimal BMI is the result of improvements in preventative treatments for weight-related conditions such as type 2 diabetes.
But this is just an estimate based on averages – it doesn't mean that having a "healthy" BMI is bad for you. Similarly, it shouldn't be assumed that it's now best to be in the overweight category. People often gain weight as they age, so there is the risk you could move from being overweight to obese.
You are a biological entity. A living thing. An animal. An organism. You are a great galaxy of cells, the smallest units of life, a community of ten trillion. They all breathe together. You are ten trillion life forms, the sum of which is entirely different from the parts. Do the stars added together have a mind? Is the cosmos awake? Your community is alive with communication. Your cells talk to each other, intricately, intimately. You are filled with the whispering of microscopic lives. What language do I speak to myself? The language of nerves and glands, at least, but probably even more subtle dialects exist. We do not know the secrets of tumours yet, nor the detailed gossip of undifferentiated cells. No one on planet earth can say with the slightest certainty how consciousness arises from the ruckus of ionic currents in our skulls, or even if it does; the brain may be but an instrument, a lens through which we study ourselves. You would likely die without the quiet energies tha...