Overweight men take note, obesity causes a dramatically higher fatal heart attack risk, even if you have no other cardiovascular disease risk factors, according to an analysis of a rather large (sorry!) sample of middle-aged men.
It seems there’s something about carrying all that extra weight that contributes, on its own, to heart problems. So you might have perfect blood pressure, be free of diabetes, have normal cholesterol and no sign of arterial disease yet your weight still ups your chances of a fatal heart attack.
This finding comes from work by the British Heart Foundation’s Cardiovascular Researcher Centre. A heart attack happens when blood vessels that bring blood to the heart itself are blocked, stopping enough oxygen from getting to the heart. The muscle is then starved for oxygen and its cells start to die off.
The team spent almost 15 years following 6,082 men who had high cholesterol but without a history of diabetes or heart disease. As the study went forward, the researchers saw 214 heart disease deaths, just over a 1000 heart attacks and/or strokes where the patient survived the event. The research confirmed the long held medical belief obesity is associated with a greater chance of having all the risk factors normally associated with heart disease.
The thing was, even after accounting for factors like age and whether the participants were smokers, the risk of dying among the obese men (BMI 30.0 to 39.9) was three quarters higher than for men of normal weight.
Obese men in their middle years were found to have a 60% greater chance of dying due to a heart attack than those of the same age, but who fell into more normal weight bands, even after excluding the risk factors commonly recognized for heart disease. Obesity itself appears to play some role in fatal heart attacks.
Why the increased risk?
No one is sure, though experts suspect the long-term inflammation that comes with carrying lots of weight might be the real reason of the increased risk. More work is needed, though experts who didn’t take part in the study aren’t at all surprised that the heart risk of all those extra pounds isn’t explained by traditional cardiovascular risk factors.
Experts believe the answer might lie in chemicals the fat cells release, or perhaps that those suffering from obesity tend to have bigger heart muscles in order to handle the added stress of their enlarged bodies. It may be that a heart so stressed struggles to keep going during an adverse heart event.
The findings also suggest that treating cholesterol and blood pressure, managing diabetes in people and addressing their weight issues are all key steps to reducing heart disease risk in men. Losing weight (or not gaining it in the first place) needs to get more attention, more resources and more support.