Eat, get fat and not get sick
Scientists have explained why obesity is not dangerous for everyone
Irina Figurina, "Doctor Peter"
Not every excess of the body is equally harmful, according to German scientists. They cite the example of people with "metabolically healthy obesity" who are not at risk of high blood pressure or diabetes. A living rebuke to all nutritionists.
Article by Zembic et al. An Empirically Derived Definition of Metabolically Healthy Obesity Based on the Risk of Cardiovascular and Total Mortality is published in the journal JAMA Network Open.
A large-scale study, which analyzed the data of 386 thousand people from 18 to 75 years old, was conducted from 2015 to 2020. The authors concluded that there are three criteria that make it possible to distinguish a category of obese people who do not have great health risks:
- Systolic pressure is below 130 mmHg without taking medications that reduce blood pressure.
- The ratio of waist and hip volume is less than 0.95 for women and 1.05 for men (you need to divide the waist volume in centimeters by the hip volume).
- There is no diabetes.
Doctors also say that some patients have a so-called benign type of obesity.
– Yes, such people really exist, but in my practice there were only a few of them, – the therapist Yana Kulakova told "Doctor Peter". – These are obese people, but very proportionally built, with a clearly visible waist. I had such a patient, she ate fast carbohydrates without restriction – sweets, cookies, cakes. At the same time, there is no hint of diabetes mellitus or arterial hypertension.
Model Tess Holliday weighs 155 kilograms, but this does not prevent her from making a career and being considered a beauty. Photo by @tessholliday.
These are mostly obese women of the "pear" type. That is, all the excess weight goes into the hips. There is also a variant of "apple" (abdominal obesity), when fat is concentrated on the abdomen. According to my observations, people with this type of figure are most susceptible to various diseases – primarily cardiovascular.
According to the Ministry of Health, more than 40 million people in Russia today are obese. Excess weight increases the risk of chronic diseases, hypertension, diabetes, as well as problems with the cardiovascular system.
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