Dichroic Reflections

an interesting correlation

I was contacted by one of my oldest friends recently (since 2nd or 3rd grade, but I didn't have her most current address) and through her found that our old camp has a couple of YahooGroups, one from its all girl days (including when we were campers, me for two years, her for longer) and one from its coed days, when we were counselors, aged 16. My mother and grandmother went there too. (In the process I also learned Mom is not only on the YGroup but has a new email address she'd forgotten to tell me about. Mothers.)

One thing that all has me thinking about is weight. That summer we were counselors, between the indifferent food and all the extra activity, I got down to 95 pounds, the lowest I've been at my current height. During the course of the summer, I got sick at least three times: once from dehydration, once from a staph infection (but no one else who'd drunk from the same bottle as the girl who originally had it got staph - or else they all fought it off) and once from a stomach virus. Even at my normal 100 - 105* I got sick a few times a year back then. By the end of college or my early working days my weight got up to 110, and up to 115 in Houston when I began playing Ultimate Frisbee and then stayed around 110-115 when I began then rowing. A hundred ten seems to be a switch for me; at anything above that weight I get sick much less often. (When I moved in with Rudder, he got me taking a multivitamin daily, which probably also helps.) A few years after we moved out here, the lake opened, and we began rowing much more seriously and lifting weights. My weight went up to 120-123*, and I hardly ever got sick. Also, after I couple years of rowing, I noticed that the IBS was bothering me a lot less. In the last two years, when I was working on my instrument rating, I was lifting heavy and rowing less, and my weight went up to 130. I'm trying to keep it a bit lower, because of wanting to row lightweight, and right now it's at 127*, or at least anywhere from 125-130 depending on time of cycle, time of day, how recently I've gone to the bathroom, and so on. When I tried to give blood a few months ago, I wasn't reject for low blood iron, as I usually was about 4/5 times in the past. Two months ago, I got a physical and asked to have my ferretin levels checked, on the advice of a rowing coach who says blood iron is often low in rowers but it may not show in standard tests. My levels were very good. Yesterday, I gave blood again, and the droplet they took to test sank right to the bottom of the vial, heavy with iron.

In other words, in my experience, the heavier I get, the healthier I am. I don't intend to test this by continuing to gain weight - at least, the only way I can imagine doing that would be if I got much more seriously into weightlifting. I surmise there would be a point of diminishing returns, and eventually one at which continued weight gain would decrease my health. On the other hand, my BMI right now is 23 - within the normal range, but toward the higher end of it.

For another, when I turned 16 I was wearing preteen and student sizes. I was very happy, toward the end of high school (aged 17) to finally be able to wear junior size 1 or 3. In college I was wearing junior 3-5 or a misses 2 or 4. In recent years, I've gotten a little curvier and more muscular; I can't fit into as many juniors sizes, which seem to assume twiglike arms and legs. I mostly wear a misses 4, occasionally a 6 if something is cut small or I want it to fit more loosely. Now there are a couple contributing factors; there may have been some upward creep in manufacturers sizing and the current lower wiasts fit my body shape much better, since I've always had a very straight waist and hence not a small one. Still, even at 5'2"*, I doubt many people would consider someone who wears US size 4 to be overweight. My resting heart rate is 57. My blood pressure is generally something like 118 over 70 or 80. (Granted, it was higher yesterday: at work, right after walking about two city blocks to the vampires' mobile unit, right before donating blood. I'm not afraid of needles, but I don't think anyone really likes them. So I don't think that BP counts.) My cholesterol is good. My bodyfat percentage is at the lower end of the normal range.

What I'm saying here, is that maybe someone ought to rethink the weight charts. Maybe they ought to chart immune system function against weight, as well as things like heart rate and BP and cholesterol. Maybe medical professionals ought to make it clearer that thinner isn't always better. I'm willing to believe that obesity (in the technical medical definition) may be unhealthy, because beyond a certain point it's demonstrably harder for epople to get around (that is, people who weigh 500 lbs seem to have a harder time walking). On the other hand, body builders can easily get into the range medically considered obese, and more commonly, so can people who may have a little extra fat but also a lot of muscle (including some very healthy rower friends of mine). Maybe there are better ways to assess health, and better recommendations we should be making.

Posted by dichroic at May 12, 2006 02:51 PM