ticker shock

In case you haven't seen it, here is the story about the University of Rochester study that discovered non-obese patients had a 76 percent greater risk of sudden cardiac risk than obese patients. ("When overweight patients were factored out, the researchers were startled to find that underweight and normal-weight patients ran a 99 percent higher risk of sudden cardiac failure than obese patients.")

The line from the author of the survey - "He theorizes that because their bodies are already surviving bad treatment, they are more resistant to heart failure" - brings up something I find interesting, which is that people always seem to assume fat people's hearts are in bad shape because of all the checks they see in the con column without taking into account factors in the pro column as well. Every time a fat person climbs the stairs they are working much harder than the skinny person next to them. Which is good and bad or whatever it is, but it is ultimately a fact. That heart is working hard. Why isn't that ever in the equation?