Obesity could be a bigger health risk than smoking shocking new report

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Heart attacks are likely to effect the overweight as much as 10 years before their ‘healthy weight’ counterparts a shocking new study carried out in the US revealed this week.

A recent study of more than 111,000 people is one of the first of it’s kind to put actual numbers to the risk of obesity and suggests “excess adiposity” - fat tissue - is more dangerous to the heart than smoking.

This is a shocking statement and may trigger calls for greater measures to fight the obesity epidemic sweeping the nation and effecting over 60% of the population of most major western countries.

When interviewed head of the study Dr Peter McCullough a consulatant cardiologist and chief of nutrition and prevention medicine at William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak Michigan said the “The leading theory in cardiology right now is that the fat tissue is actually producing factors that precipitate heart attacks,”

The theory is that cholesterol builds up in the coronary arteries and inflammatory or other chemicals produced by fat cells trigger the plaque to suddenly rupture, causing a blood clot to form and unleashing an acute heart attack.

But why has this connection not been discovered before now?

It is only very recently that their have been enough patients of differing body sizes having their first heart attacks to really scientifically study the association between obesity and heart attacks. During the study Dr McCollough and his team analyzed data from a nationwide U.S. registry of people hospitalized for heart attack and unstable angina, or chest pain, from 2001 to 2007.

A total of 111,847 men and women who had experienced a first heart attack were included in the final analysis. They were grouped according to their body mass index, or BMI, a measure of body fat based on height and weight.

The researchers found that, the heavier the person, the younger the age of a first heart attack.

The most obese people had their heart attacks on average when they were 59. That compares to about 75 for the leanest group (average body weight 47 kilograms, or about 103 pounds, meaning they were actually considered underweight), and 71 for people of “normal” weight, where the average weight is 65 kilograms, or about 142 pounds.

The most obese group had a BMI of 40 or more and weighed on average 127 kilograms, or 280 pounds.

While this may have always been suspected this study provides the first real scientific evidence to back up what doctors have probably know for a long time. It will be interesting to see if this study is taken seriously and more people look at their increased level of risk and start to do something about it. Let me know what your views on this research is and more importantly what you intend to do about it?

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Obesity more harmful to heart than smoking: study - Canada.com - Obesity more harmful to heart than smoking: study Canada.com, Canada - 9 hours ago A study of more than 111000 people is one of the first to put real numbers to the risk of obesity and suggests “excess adiposity” - fat tissue - is more …