This particular statistic has a ton of problems. It's impossible to disassociate the various causative pathways that land you at a BMI below 25. A ton of them involve diseases and chronic conditions.
Unfortunately, it's very hard to impossible to RCT this. And if a study has no RCT, take it with as much salt as your diet allows.
You definitely don't want to intentionally gain weight on the basis of this. If weight control is easy for you, I would personally strive for a lower BMI.
If losing weight below 25 is hard for you and your body just seems to refuse to do it, then you might be OK at 25.
> This particular statistic has a ton of problems. It's impossible to disassociate the various causative pathways that land you at a BMI below 25. A ton of them involve diseases and chronic conditions.
I'd beware of using this sort of hand-waving to ignore the studies, there are also effects pushing the relationship between average health outcomes and BMI in the other direction. Your ethnic origin seems to be very important, and for ethnicities who already have a high propensity for Type 2 diabetes, higher BMI is a factor, but not a huge one.
> Strikingly, in those with a normal weight, the prevalence of diabetes was 5.0% in whites, 10.1% in Asians and American Indians/Alaskan Natives, 13.0% in Hispanics, 13.5% in Blacks, and 18.0% in Hawaiians/Pacific Islanders.
> Furthermore, when they examined the relative risks for diabetes for each BMI category by race/ethnicity, Zhu et al. reported that across all racial/ethnic groups whites had the steepest BMI gradient, followed by Asians, American Indians/Alaskan Natives, Hispanics, Hawaiians/Pacific Islanders, and blacks.
Another potential distortion comes out of this when you consider that black and Hispanic people are the fattest in the US. Blacks and Hispanics can have lower lifespans for reasons other than BMI, such as access to health care, high-quality food, exposure to violence, physical jobs, etc...
So just these two factors complicate the picture in general (your fattest have the least access to health care and most exposure to danger and neglect), and and in the other direction specifically for white people (an increase of BMI in white people makes a huge difference in their incidence of diabetes.)
Anecdotally, I'm black, and there's a lot of thin diabetes in my family. My dad usually runs about 20-21 BMI, and is pre-diabetic. His mother, who is also small, though not quite as small, is also diabetic. As far as I can tell, the fatter people in both sides of my family are no more likely to be diabetic than the thinner ones.
Not the original commenter, but pointing out problems and complexities is not hand-waving. Nutrition science is incredibly complex. If it wasn't, obesity would be solved by now.
> Another potential distortion comes out of this when you consider that black and Hispanic people are the fattest in the US. Blacks and Hispanics can have lower lifespans for reasons other than BMI, such as access to health care, high-quality food, exposure to violence, physical jobs, etc...
Okay, but this study is from Australia, on Australians.
Unfortunately, it's very hard to impossible to RCT this. And if a study has no RCT, take it with as much salt as your diet allows.
You definitely don't want to intentionally gain weight on the basis of this. If weight control is easy for you, I would personally strive for a lower BMI.
If losing weight below 25 is hard for you and your body just seems to refuse to do it, then you might be OK at 25.