JAMA study - Healthy but overweight adults have 43 percent higher risk of heart disease
A report published in today’s Journal of the American Medical Association provides additional incentive to follow up on New Year resolutions to exercise and eat properly.
Northwestern University researchers tracked 17,643 patients for three decades and found that being overweight in mid-life substantially increased the risk of dying of heart disease later in life — even in people who began the study with healthy blood pressure and cholesterol levels.
In the study, patients whose body mass index (BMI) placed them in the obese or grossly overweight categories were 43 percent more likely to die of heart disease, and were also four times as likely to be hospitalized for heart disease. BMI of 25 to 29 were considered overweight, and BMI greater than 30 were considered to be obese.
These results are in contrast to a controversial CDC study published last year indicating that obesity, though harmful, was not as lethal as generally believed.
Fat tissue “is not like an inert storage depot — it’s a very dynamic organ that is actually producing hormones and chemical messengers,” said Dr. JoAnn Manson, chief of preventive medicine at Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital. These substances can damage blood vessels, increase the risk of blood clots and cause insulin resistance that makes people prone to diabetes — all without elevating blood pressure or cholesterol, said Manson, who was not involved in the Northwestern study.
The active organ-like behavior of accumulated fat tissue is still being studied, but there is an increasing body of research demonstrating the importance and generally negative effects of large deposits of fat tissue on overall health.
Links:
- New Study Links Obesity, Heart Problems, Yahoo/AP, January 11, 2006
- Midlife Body Mass Index and Hospitalization and Mortality in Older Age, Lijing L. Yan, PhD, MPH; Martha L. Daviglus, MD, PhD; Kiang Liu, PhD; Jeremiah Stamler, MD; Renwei Wang, MD, MS; Amber Pirzada, MD; Daniel B. Garside, BS; Alan R. Dyer, PhD; Linda Van Horn, PhD, RD; Youlian Liao, MD; James F. Fries, MD; Philip Greenland, MD, Journal of the American Medical Association, January 11, 2006
- Study confirms you can’t be fat - and healthy, MSNBC, April 19, 2005
Tags: obesity, nutrition, health, diet, weight loss, weight management
