I mean shouldn’t the extremes of both end be equally harming to a person? why do skinny/underweight people and fat/overweight people not have the the same amount of health issues?
In: Biology
Extremes are definitely both harming, and the further away you get from the average weight in either direction the worse off you’ll be. In fact, in relation to BMI, your health will **quickly and severely** drop off far faster if it’s too low, killing you from malnutrition/starvation. For reference, a normal ***adult*** (if you’re younger than 18 reading this, *this* ***does not*** *apply to you*) BMI is 20-24.9; go up 5 points to 30 and you’re obese and generally less healthy, go down 5 points to 15 and you’re in severe danger.
I’m happy to go into the details of the dangers associated with either, but the ELI5 version is that underweight people have significantly higher short-term risk for injury/death and overweight people have significantly higher long-term risk for injury/death.
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