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June 10 (UPI) – Having normal blood sugar, cholesterol and blood pressure doesn’t mean an obese person is actually healthy, according to an analysis released by the journal Thursday. Diabetology find.
This is because people who are severely overweight are at increased risk for diabetes, heart disease, strokes and respiratory disease, the researchers said.
Compared to healthy people without obesity, people who were obese but had healthy blood sugar, cholesterol and blood pressure, a condition called metabolically healthy obesity, were 4.3 times more likely to have type 2 diabetes, according to the data.
In addition, they had an 18% higher risk of heart attack or stroke and a 76% higher risk of heart failure, according to the researchers.
They were also 28% more likely to develop respiratory disease and 19% more likely to suffer from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD.
Based on these results, the researchers called for the term metabolically healthy obesity to be avoided in medicine, “because it is misleading.”
“People with metabolically healthy obesity had a significantly higher risk of diabetes, heart attack and stroke, heart failure, respiratory disease and all-cause mortality compared to people who were not. not obese and with a healthy metabolic profile, ”they wrote.
“It should be noted in particular that people who were metabolically obese had a higher risk of heart failure and respiratory disease than people without obesity who were metabolically unhealthy,” researchers from the Institute of Health said. and the welfare of the University of Glasgow in Scotland.
According to estimates from the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, up to 300 million people worldwide, 40% of whom are American adults, meet the criteria for obesity or severe overweight.
The ongoing “epidemics” of type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease and many other serious health problems are linked to obesity, researchers from the University of Glasgow said.
Obesity typically causes high blood sugar and insulin resistance as well as increased blood pressure and other metabolic changes, they said.
However, these effects are not universal, and some obese people have normal levels of these and other important measures.
It’s called metabolically healthy obesity, and it’s estimated to affect up to a fifth of the world’s population, they said.
For this study, the researchers analyzed data from over 380,000 adults in England, Scotland and Wales, who were either overweight or obese, over a period of approximately 11 years.
They compared participants’ body weight, blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar, and other measures, as well as lifestyle habits, along with the incidence of type 2 diabetes, heart attacks, and strokes, heart failure and respiratory disease in the study population.
People who were metabolically obese were generally younger, watched less television, exercised more, consumed more red and processed meat, and were less likely to be males and non-whites than participants with metabolically unhealthy obesity, researchers say.
One-third of people with metabolically healthy obesity at the start of the study became metabolically unhealthy within three to five years, they said.
“Weight management could be beneficial for all obese people, regardless of their metabolic profile,” they wrote.
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