Obesity more harmful to heart than smoking: Study

Jim Marino — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 11:56:32 +0000

Researchers at William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Michigan have concluded that obese people are more prone to heart attacks than smokers. Cholesterol builds up in the coronary arteries. Fat cells produce inflammatory or other chemicals which prompt the plaque to suddenly break. This causes a blood clot, resulting in a heart attack. 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 (BMI), a measure of body fat based on height and weight. All the patients, regardless of body size, had about the same level of LDL cholesterol. Smoking rates were equal across the group under examination. This means that excess fat causes heart disease in other ways. While patients with the highest body weight lost 12 years of life, on an average, prior to their first heart attack, smoking they took less than 10 years of life before the first heart attack.

Obese women at a disadvantage during cancer diagnosis and treatment

Jim Marino — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 18:27:05 +0000

According to a research on 2,887 patients, women who had a body mass index (BMI) of over 30kg/m2 and were suffering from breast cancer had poorer outcomes in terms of being disease-free and of overall survival, as compared to non-obese patients. The research, led by Dr. Evandro de Azambuja and colleagues from the Jules Bordet Institute in Brussels, demonstrated that obese women presented significantly more often with stage 3-4 disease and that they were less likely to have undergone ultrasound or MRI examinations. They also experienced more surgical delay and prolonged hospital stay after surgery.

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Obesity more harmful to heart than smoking: Study

Obese women at a disadvantage during cancer diagnosis and treatment