Study: 50 Percent Of Overweight Adults, 33 Percent Of Obese Have Normal BP, Cholesterol, Blood Sugar Levels

Vancouver, Alberta (AHN) - New ways of rethinking and redefining health are emerging as various wellness groups seek fresh ways to battle obesity or maintain good health.

While fat acceptance groups in the U.S. want to change the notion that being slim is being healthy and being fat is unhealthy, a Vancouver gym has opened its doors to kids aged 8 to 12 to pump some iron.

The fat acceptance activists want to set aside the common measurements to define who is fit or fat. Their basis in pushing for a new way of measuring health is an article in the August issue of The Archives of Internal Medicine which discovered 50 percent of overweight adults and 33 percent of obese adults have normal blood pressure, cholesterol, triglycerides and blood sugar levels, which are indicators of risk factor for chronic ailments like heart disease and diabetes and often associated with fat people.

Another advocate of the new approach to health definition is University of California-Davis nutritionist and physiologist Linda Bacon, who authored the book "Health at Every Size" due for release this fall. Bacon suggested focusing less on dieting in favor of a lifestyle change such as eating only when hungry, ingesting healthy food over a junk diet, exercising and accepting of one's body size whatever is your weight.

Another health myth than a Vancouver gym wants to shatter is that young children should not engage in weightlifting because of its potential of stunting their growth based on an old Japanese study of peasants.

Cameron Blimkie, a kinesiology professor at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario explained the finding of the Japanese study was due to its subjects being undernourished and overworked.

The Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology backed Blimkie's theory. In a position paper quoted by the Globe and Mail, the society wrote, "(A resistance training) program for children and adolescents may not only improve muscular strength, endurance, power and balance; there is evidence for improvements in body composition and motor skills."