Restoring balance, the future of self help?

Bigliberty has a fascinating post on a nurses study which claims fatness and weight gain in middle age makes one less likely to qualify for the study authors definition of 'optimal health status' at the age of 70 defined thus;

...having no history of 11 major chronic diseases and having no substantial cognitive, physical, or mental limitations.

Unsurprisingly, only 9.9% can meet this definition it includes "good mental health" what is the effect on mental health of (often) long term reproach about weight?

There is a wish to define health in pointlessly elitist and arbitrary terms, even though we are all concerned with our health. With such a low number, how much are they measuring genetic inheritance?

I'm not just talking about genetic determinism, which I find a dubious concept when applied to non required traits at the best of times, but along with the way this interacts with environment? One does not choose to put on weight at middle or any other age, unless one goes on a feeding or reducing diet, anymore than a thin person chooses to be able to override unknown factors that lend themselves to weight gain at any age.

It also states that the least likelihood of being in this optimal state is if you were overweight before the age of 18 and continue to put on weight. If the things they 'take into account' have not skewered their findings, then this seems to suggest that one's metabolism is in some way related to one's health.

If so, the answer is for us to be able to adjust that, not allow that to continue and run around after the fact. It seems to me to be an extremely interesting area because the potential follow up to that is for us to be able to reset our mental and physical health, when it gets derailed and that is not a little mind-blowing.

Not only that, it's like a chain, reset weight/metabolism, reset mood patterns, i.e. depression, potentially reset from greater disturbance, drug addiction, alcoholism, other problems which possibly in some cases, are a result if some kind/s of imbalance such as criminality and so forth. Extraordinary as that may seem.

This would truly be an alternative to having a health middle man in the face of med profs and alt med practitioners. It also strikes me that it would be less misleading to categorise people not just by weight, if at all, but by some method of metabolic type.

This might actually move our knowledge on regarding the relationship between your metabolism and weight. Again, the feeling is that this would change our relationship toward those who cannot let go of the idea that all health must be regulated and channelled through them.