(2005-08-25) Luik Health Promotion Hooey

John Luik says the WHO's Health Promotion (Physical Fitness) policies are loaded with Pseudo-Science. Take, for example, one of the most extensive and publicized efforts in health promotion of all time, the Mr Fit (Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial) which was specifically designed to establish the truth of health promotion by showing that Heart Disease and Cancer could be reduced through reducing Blood Pressure, Cholesterol Level, and Smoking. After sixteen years of study, the intervention groups, which had received extensive assistance with exercise, changing diet and Smoking cessation, had results which were not significantly better than the group that had received none of these "health promotion" interventions. Indeed, the intervention group, despite lower rates of Smoking, actually had higher rates of lung cancer. What Mr Fit showed was precisely how Life Style interventions failed to reduce mortality from multifactoral diseases like cancer and heart disease. Nor was Mr Fit a scientific fluke. Consider the Framingham Study. Begun in 1950 as a longitudinal investigation of the causes of cardiovascular disease, some 5,209 men and women aged 30-59 were followed for 30 years on the assumption that those who were thinnest would have significantly lower risks for Heart Disease. But in 1979 when three of the study's lead researchers published their data it was found that for men the highest risk - that is the worst Life Expectancy - was for the thinnest men; men who were 25-40% fatter than the ideal weight were living the longest. For women, mortality was elevated only for the very thin and the very fat. The recent Centers for Disease Control (CDC) study on Obesity and mortality produced similar results. (Public Health)