I’m Headed for a Coronary…
…according to a recent study. As reported at MSNBC.com:
At last, good news for anyone who ever despaired of fitting into skinny jeans: Thin thighs might actually kill you. Or at least put a strain on your heart.
That’s the word from Danish researchers who studied more than 2,800 middle-aged people for up to a dozen years, only to find that those with the slimmest thighs had the highest chance of heart disease and premature death.
“There was up to a double risk for the people with the smallest thighs,” said Dr. Berit L. Heitmann, a director of research at Copenhagen University Hospital in Denmark. “It’s quite substantial.”
People whose thighs measured less than 60 centimeters, or about 23.6 inches in circumference, were in trouble. And those with stick-thin gams (less than 18 inches around) were at the greatest risk, according to new study in the online version of the British Medical Journal.
…“Typically a 23.6-inch thigh on a female would be a size 6 to 8,” said Greg Benson, president of the International Sports and Fitness Trainers Association.
My left and right thighs are 51 and 52 centimeters, respectively… So evidently I’m doooooomed!!!
Our findings are in line with earlier observations of a threshold effect for a low total fat free mass,2 further supporting that the apparent threshold effect for the risk related to a low thigh circumference might depend primarily on too little fat free mass in the area rather than on too little fat or a small pelvic size…
…The fact that associations were independent of percentage body fat as well as abdominal obesity suggests that the risk with smaller thighs might be associated with too little muscle mass in the region.
So it may not be the circumference per se, but what it represents on an average person - insufficient muscle.
Somehow, I don’t see that as a problem for me… especially with my favorable serum lipid profile and lack of inflammatory markers. Thus, the headline “Skinny Thighs Could Spell Your Doom” strikes me as just a bit premature… at least in my case.
Just goes to show you that it can be risky to jump to conclusions based on media descriptions, or extrapolate the results of studies done on populations to individual circumstances, without reading the fine print. Suffice it to say, I’m not gonna lose any sleep over this. 