Being overweight or obese does pose a risk of heart disease, despite claims to the contrary, a study of nearly 3,00,000 British adults suggests.<\/p>\n
While it is generally accepted that being overweight increases a person\u2019s disease risk, some researchers have recently suggested that carrying extra weight does not actually boost death rates for some, particularly the elderly.<\/p>\n
A number have even suggested that being overweight may protect against disease, a claim dubbed the \u201cobesity paradox.\u201d But the latest study, published in the European Heart Journal, said there is no paradox.<\/p>\n
It looked at 2,96,535 people aged 40-69 who enrolled in an ongoing health study in the United Kingdom between 2006 and 2010. For the latest analysis, data on the participants \u2013 all of \u201cwhite European descent\u201d \u2013 was available until 2015.<\/p>\n
The researchers noted the participants\u2019 Body Mass Index (BMI) \u2013 a ratio of weight-to-height squared used to determine whether a person falls in a healthy weight range. They then tracked who went on to develop cardiovascular disease risk (CVD) \u2013 which includes heart attack, stroke or high blood pressure.<\/p>\n
\u201cFurthermore, the risk also increases steadily the more fat a person carries around their waist,\u201d said a press statement summarising the findings.<\/p>\n
People with a BMI of 22-23 kg\/m2 had the lowest CVD risk, the study found. \u201cAs BMI increased above 22kg\/m2, the risk of CVD increased by 13 percent for every 5.2 kg\/m2 increase in women and 4.3 kg\/m2 in men.\u201d<\/p>\n
The findings presented a direct challenge to the obesity paradox.<\/p>\n
\u201cAny public misconception of a potential \u2018protective\u2019 effect of fat on heart and stroke risks should be challenged,\u201d said study co-author Stamatina Iliodromiti from the University of Glasgow. It is possible that the effect would be different for people with pre-existing disease, the authors said.<\/p>\n
But for healthy people, maintaining a BMI of 22-23 kg\/m2 appeared to minimise the risk of developing or dying from heart disease. \u201cThe less fat, especially around their abdomen, the lower the risk of future heart disease,\u201d the authors concluded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Being overweight or obese does pose a risk of heart disease, despite claims to the contrary, a study of nearly 3,00,000 British adults suggests. While it is generally accepted that being overweight increases a person\u2019s disease risk, some researchers have recently suggested that carrying extra weight does not actually boost death rates for some, particularly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25047,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25046"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25046\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25048,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25046\/revisions\/25048"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}