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Key points
- Deficiencies are never good.
- Excess can be toxic, too.
- Balance in the middle can be healthy
- What's a BMI? What's a WGI?
A Body Mass Index is a rough estimate of body composition that is used to define an unhealthy versus healthy weight. It is body mass divided by height squared (kg/m2). A BMI under 18.5 is consider underweight, whereas, a BMI of 25.0 to 29.9 is considered overweight, and a BMI over 30.0 is considered obese.
Underweight individuals may suffer from an unhealthy loss of bone, muscle and/or fat mass. Whereas overweight individuals may have more than normal bone, muscle and/or fat mass. Obese qualifying individuals in general are felt to suffer from excess fat mass and yet, they may also suffer from a loss of bone and muscle mass. In general BMIs under 20.0 and over 30.0 are associated with increased illness, disease and death, whereas BMIs from 20.0 to 30.0 are associated with relative health.
Fifty percent of the United States population is now considered obese; they have accumulated too much body mass, most specifically fat, and this has placed them at risk for illness, disease and death. Only 1.5 percent of the United States population lacks adequate body mass and qualifies as underweight and unhealthy. They, too, are at increased risk for illness, disease and death.
Interestingly, nearly 50 percent of the country is suffering from a low income or poverty status, and although they are not the only correlates for obesity, financial stress, low income, deficient education, and poverty are all associated with increased obesity rates. Excess weight is inversely correlated with deficient wealth.
Can excess weight lead to deficient wealth, or can deficient wealth lead to excess weight?
The answer is “Yes”.
Arguably, excess weight and the associated comorbidities— the phenotype of obesity—can make productivity and obtaining and sustaining work more difficult. In addition, cultural bias against the obese may limit opportunities for wealth accumulation. Perhaps most important, lack of wealth is a threat and stressor that can precipitate the phenotype of obesity. Therefore, curing obesity will require removing the threat and stressor of deficient wealth and ensuring safety and relative income security and equity.
Being underweight, overweight, and under-wealthy are all risk factors for illness, disease and death. How about being over-wealthy? Is there an equivalent to obesity when we are talking of wealth accumulation: Is there ever too much wealth?
From a societal standpoint, extreme wealth and wealth inequality are toxic. Threat can be relative; therefore, individuals with less wealth may have elevated systemic threat responses. In addition, wealth inequality tends to grow and polarize into extreme poverty and extreme wealth. The impoverished clearly suffer with more stress, pain, illness, and disease when such polarization occurs, but what about the wealthy?
Some wealth is clearly protective and leads to better health and more happiness, but there is a paucity of information regarding the physical and mental health of the ultrarich. Subjectively, we see the ultrarich and their descendents suffer from such things as anxiety, depression, addiction, and loss of meaning and purpose. The individuals and their families appear to have an increased level of dysfunction, but it is unclear whether the dysfunction is greater, less than, or the same as in the general population.
Notably, the ultrarich suffer from the trappings of their wealth. They have more to track, manage, and protect. Their wealth can become isolating for them, as well. They can be resented by many and targeted by others. Healthy and meaningful relationships can be hard to find for the ultrarich. Their wealth can also precipitate and facilitate their seeking of pleasure over happiness, a formula for addiction and dysfunction. The ultrarich have some increased risk factors for illness and disease.
Income disparity and extreme wealth are antidemocratic. The extremely rich have more power and influence over the institutions of government and are able to sway policy to their benefit while excluding the voices of the masses. Oligarchy, autocracy, and even revolution can follow. Polarity of wealth is not safe for anyone, but perhaps most so for the extremely under-wealthy and the extremely over-wealthy.
Successful democracy is dependent on the wheels of capitalism and socialism being in balance to meet both the needs of the individual and the greater good. It is no coincidence that countries such as Sweden that have relative income equality rank at the top of health and happiness scales. We are healthy and happy as individuals and society when both weight and wealth distribution are within the middle ground.
Just as obesity defines a level of overweight that is considered a disease and a risk for other diseases that we can then target with a therapeutic approach to cure, we need a term for a level of over-wealth that is considered a disease and a risk for other diseases so that we can evolve a therapeutic approach to cure that affliction as well. We should devote as many resources to the study of morbid wealth as we do to the study of morbid obesity to ensure a healthy and happy society.
Can we define an index that will help us determine when wealth and inequity become truly toxic to both the individual and society to assist in policy adjustments for the benefit and health of individuals and the whole? Perhaps a Wealth Gap Index?
If we can target ideal weight, can we also target ideal wealth?
Where on these two spectrums from underweight to overweight and under-wealth to over-wealth are we maximally healthy, happy, and perhaps most important, safe?
Stay safe and stay tuned
