Obesity more harmful to heart than smoking: study

"Heart attacks are hitting the overweight more than a decade sooner than 'normal' weight people, researchers are reporting. A study of more than 111,000 people is one of the first to put real numbers to the risk of obesity and suggests 'excess adiposity' - fat tissue - is more dangerous to the heart than smoking. 'The leading theory in cardiology right now is that the fat tissue is actually producing factors that precipitate heart attacks,' says lead author Dr. Peter McCullough, consultant cardiologist and chief of nutrition and prevention medicine at William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Michigan. The study appears in the most recent issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology