People who are 30 pounds (circa 15kg) or more overweight may want to slim down a bit even if they don\u2019t have high blood pressure or any other heart disease risk, according to scientists at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center.
In a study published, the researchers found that slightly less than half of the people who were considered obese \u2013 30 pounds or more overweight \u2013 developed metabolic syndrome within 10 years, putting them at a much higher risk for cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
\u201cCommon medical wisdom has been that some people who are obese seemed to be pretty healthy and free from heart disease risks, so they haven\u2019t been advised to lose weight or take other steps to prevent future heart disease,\u201d said Morgana Mongraw-Chaffin, Ph.D., assistant professor of public health sciences at Wake Forest Baptist and lead author of the study.
\u201cThe big question has been whether these people who are metabolically healthy will stay that way or whether they will progress to metabolic syndrome over time.\u201d
Metabolic syndrome includes those risk factors \u2013 high blood pressure, high blood sugar, unhealthy cholesterol levels and abdominal fat \u2013 which double the risk of cardiovascular disease that can lead to heart attacks and strokes. In addition, these risk factors increase the risk of diabetes by five times.
The Wake Forest Baptist study included 6,809 participants from the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis who were recruited from six sites in the United States. Participants with cardiovascular disease were excluded.
The study was conducted to determine if metabolically healthy obesity (MHO) at baseline remained stable or led to metabolic syndrome and increased the risk of heart and vascular disease. Participants were followed for 12 years with clinical evaluation repeated every two years. MHO was defined as a body mass index of more than 30 and two or fewer risk factors.
The researchers found that compared to normal weight, baseline MHO was not significantly associated with incident cardiovascular disease, the first occurrence of a potentially life-threatening condition. However, almost half of the participants developed metabolic syndrome over the course of the study and had increased odds of cardiovascular disease compared to those with stable MHO and normal weight.
\u201cIn this paper, we specifically looked to see whether that progression was associated with a higher risk for heart disease and we found that it was,\u201d Mongraw-Chaffin said. \u201cMetabolically healthy obesity is not a stable or reliable indicator of future risk for cardiovascular disease. Right now, there isn\u2019t any way to know which 50 percent will progress and which won\u2019t.
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Wake Forest Baptist Medical Centerhttps:\/\/tinyurl.com\/yd39ybak<\/link>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
People who are 30 pounds (circa 15kg) or more overweight may want to slim down a bit even if they don\u2019t have high blood pressure or any other heart disease risk, according to scientists at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center.In a study published, the researchers found that slightly less than half of the people who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":638,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-e-news"],"yoast_head":"\n