Gaining Weight With Age Might Be Healthier Than Staying Slim

Curiosity Weekly

Warner Bros. Discovery

Science

4.6 • 964 Ratings

🗓️ 22 March 2021

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Learn about why it might actually be healthy to gain weight as you get older; the alkaloids responsible for why our pets can’t eat chocolate; and how small a minority can be to reshape society.

Gaining weight as you age may be healthier than staying at the same weight by Grant Currin

Survival tip: Start at normal weight and slowly add pounds. (2021). EurekAlert! https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-02/osu-sts020121.php
Ingraham, C. (2016, January 29). Look at how much weight you’re going to gain. Washington Post; The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/01/29/the-age-when-you-gain-the-most-weight/
Zheng, H., Echave, P., Mehta, N., & Myrskylä, M. (2021). Life-long body mass index trajectories and mortality in two generations. Annals of Epidemiology, 56, 18–25. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annepidem.2021.01.003
Your Fat Friend. (2019, October 15). The Bizarre and Racist History of the BMI - Elemental. Medium; Elemental. https://elemental.medium.com/the-bizarre-and-racist-history-of-the-bmi-7d8dc2aa33bb

Why can’t our pets eat chocolate? by Cameron Duke

Biello, D. (2007, August 16). Strange but True: Cats Cannot Taste Sweets. Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-cats-cannot-taste-sweets/
Blum, D. (2013, February 14). The Poisonous Chemistry of Chocolate. Wired; WIRED. https://www.wired.com/2013/02/the-poisonous-nature-of-chocolate/?code=LecCOSJvlBgJVoqVnCpxVDg3cPEDfZqZwmtPhgOOWhI&state=%7B%22redirectURL%22%3A%22%2F2013%2F02%2Fthe-poisonous-nature-of-chocolate%2F%22%7D
Hazel, S. (2017, December 21). Why can’t dogs eat chocolate? The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/why-cant-dogs-eat-chocolate-89374
R Thomas Palo, & Robbins, C. T. (1991). Plant defenses against mammalian herbivory. Crc Press.

Research Shows How Small a Minority Can Be to Reshape Society by Mae Rice

Tipping point for large-scale social change? Just 25 percent | Penn Today. (2018, June 7). Penn Today. https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/damon-centola-tipping-point-large-scale-social-change
Centola, D., Becker, J., Brackbill, D., & Baronchelli, A. (2018). Experimental evidence for tipping points in social convention. Science, 360(6393), 1116–1119. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aas8827
Noonan, D. (2018, June 8). The 25% Revolution—How Big Does a Minority Have to Be to Reshape Society? Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-25-revolution-how-big-does-a-minority-have-to-be-to-reshape-society/
Yong, E. (2018, June 7). The Atlantic. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/06/the-tipping-point-when-minority-views-take-over/562307/

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, you're about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from
0:04.8	Curiosity.com. I'm Cody Gough. And I'm Ashley Hamer. Today you learn about why it
0:09.2	might actually be healthy to gain weight as you get older, why our pets can't eat chocolate, and how small
0:15.7	a minority can be to reshape society.
0:18.7	Let's satisfy some curiosity.
0:21.2	Researchers have just found some surprising patterns lurking in one of the coolest
0:25.6	data sets we've got. The TLDR, slowly putting on weight, may not be as
0:31.8	unhealthy as you'd think. The data set I'm talking about is the
0:35.6	Framingham Heart Study. It was a longitudinal cohort study. That's a kind of study that uses
0:41.6	participants with some trait in common and follows them over time.
0:45.9	For this study, the investigators recruited more than 5,200 participants who lived in Framingham, Massachusetts.
0:53.0	They kept track of them from 1948 all the way to 2010,
0:56.5	and also followed their children from 1971 to 2014.
1:01.0	This gold standard research led to some important breakthroughs and it's still a rich source of data for scientists asking questions that are hard to answer using more common methods.
1:11.0	A recent study used the data set to examine how weight
1:15.4	changes over a person's lifetime affect how long they live. It's an important
1:20.9	question because people in the US, on average, gain weight consistently from their
1:25.8	20s through their mid-50s, and maybe even longer.
1:30.0	With that
1:35.0	in mind, the results from the Framingham study are pretty good news. The researchers divided participants of that first older generation
1:38.0	into six categories based on their pattern of weight gain or loss over time.
1:43.0	Then they looked at how long people in each category tended to live.
	...

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