Scientists from the University of Birmingham in Great Britain claim that the idea that someone can be obese but healthy is actually just a myth. In their as-yet-unpublished study, they looked at 3,5 million people in the UK and concluded that obese people who were "metabolically healthy" had a higher risk of heart disease and stroke than people of normal weight.
Their study was presented at the European Congress on Obesity in Portugal. They pointed out that the idea of "obese but healthy" refers to the attractive theory that if people are obese and all their other metabolic factors, such as blood pressure and blood sugar, are within recommended limits, then the extra weight is not harmful.
In order to determine whether this claim is true, scientists analyzed data on millions of Britons between 1995 and 2015. Obese are people who were obese at the start of the study (body mass index was 30 or more) and had no evidence of heart disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol or diabetes. They discovered that obese but "metabolically healthy" people had a higher risk of heart disease and stroke than people of normal weight, reports Klix.ba.
"The results of this study show that people who are obese have an increased risk of heart disease and stroke, even though they may be otherwise healthy," said Dr. Mike Knapton.
Rishi Calejaceti from the University of Birmingham pointed out that the priority of health professionals should be to promote and facilitate weight loss among obese people, regardless of the presence or absence of metabolic abnormalities.
"At the population level, so-called metabolically healthy obesity is not a harmless phenomenon," Caleyachetty said.
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