whenever i have an obese patient who complains about how bad he or she feels, my first thought is." does he or she really understand who pays the price for the fact they cannot control what they put in their mouth?" Well, it typically isn't the patient, its the wife or husband who has to wipe his behind because the patient is too fat to reach, or its the wife or husband who hurts their back moving their obese spouse, or its the wife or husband who is a "slave" to their spouse because their spouse cared more about themselves and their mouth than how it would affect the "quality of life" of their spouse. Or its the older spouse who is left alone with no financial backup because the spouse had a heart attack after years of just not caring. It truly breaks my heart to see a patients spouse suffer because the patient never really cared enough to take better care of themselves. Especially when a heart attack is preventable.

Excess Weight Weighs Heavily for Cardiac Risks

Heart Attack - image from Shutterstock

New data suggests that we overturn the notion that the adverse health effects of overweight are generally inconsequential so long as the individual is metabolically healthy.  Borge G. Nordestgaard, from Copenhagen University Hospital (Denmark), and colleagues studied data collected of 71,527 men and women enrolled in the Copenhagen General Population Study, for whom BMI, waist measurement, blood pressure and lab tests to identify Metabolic  Syndrome were conducted. The team found that among subjects who did not have Metabolic Syndrome, the hazard ratio for heart attack compared to normal weight participants was 1.26 in overweight individuals and 1.88 and those who were obese. Submitting that: "These findings suggest that overweight and obesity are risk factors for [myocardial infarction] and [ischemic heart disease] regardless of the presence or absence of metabolic syndrome and that metabolic syndrome is no more valuable than BMI in identifying individuals at risk.”