By Victovoi - Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9857499
All the past "feel good" stories over the past few years stating it is possible to be "fat but still fit" (physically healthy) are, unsurprisingly, being proven wrong.
A new study published in the European Heart Journal Monday finds that being overweight increases your risk of coronary heart disease, even if you are otherwise considered healthy, destabilizing the common conception that someone can be "fat but fit"...
...Researchers analyzed thousands of incidences of coronary heart disease over a more than 12-year period in 10 countries in Europe. They found that being overweight or obese was associated with a more than 25 percent higher risk of developing coronary heart disease, even in people who did not have any other markers that reflected an increased risk of heart disease.
Dr. Jennifer Ashton, ABC News' chief medical correspondent, said the research shows that even if people appear healthy based on blood tests today, the risk of health complications can increase over time if they are obese.
And we read this, showing even more types of cancer are associated with obesity:
While obesity is often associated with a host of other health issues including high blood pressure, stroke and heart attack, a new study is examining how the condition is also related to cancer risk.
A review of several studies published today in the New England Journal of Medicine found new associations between obesity the development of eight additional cancers, in addition to others previously known.
Researchers from the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) looked at more than 1,000 epidemiological studies and found that "excess body fatness" is also linked to the risk of developing gastric, liver, gallbladder, pancreatic, ovarian, thyroid, blood (multiple myeloma) and brain (meningioma) cancers.
"I think the main takeaway point is that your health and specifically your body fatness is an important factor for many types of cancer," Dr. Richard Lee, Medical Director of the Integrative and Supportive Oncology Program at the University Hospitals Seidman Cancer Center, told ABC News.
"Patients should understand that they can decrease the risk for developing cancer and improving overall survivorship," by keeping their weight below obesity thresholds, he said. This information can help doctors advising patients on cancer risk, he added.
Researchers in this study also attempted to quantify the risk for obese people to develop this variety of cancers. They found obese people had 1.8 times the risk for developing liver cancer, 4.8 times as high for esophageal adenocarcinoma, and 7.1 times as high for uterine cancer. They also confirmed that for some of these cancers, as your weight goes up, so does the risk.
We read a lot online about "fat shaming" - in reality, what goes on in society today is "fat norming." But it is a serious health problem, both for the affected individual and for society as a whole. We need more realism and less "feel good" stories that mislead people about real lifestyle risks.
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