Doctors warn that fat can kill even if person is healthy (Scotland)

A study has found that obese people who are healthy are still twice as likely to suffer a fatal heart attack. A research team from Glasgow University discovered that a person's weight and levels of fat can directly increase the risk of a fatal heart attack by as much as 75 percent, even if the person is otherwise healthy. It is a known fact that obese people are more likely to have high blood pressure, diabetes and cholesterol, all contributory factors to heart conditions. "The message coming from this is that obesity itself is not a benign condition," the Scotsman quoted Dr Jennifer Logue, who led the research, as saying. The research team tracked the health of more than 6,000 middle-aged men with high cholesterol, but no history of diabetes or cardiovascular disease, for around 15 years. After excluding men who had cardiovascular problems or died within two years of the start of monitoring, the team recorded 214 deaths and 1,027 non-fatal heart attacks or strokes occurred during the whole study period. The risk of a heart attack was then compared across categories of increasing body mass index (BMI), using two different approaches. One simply corrected for any differences in the age or smoking status of the men, while the second corrected for cardiovascular risk factors such as high cholesterol and blood pressure, deprivation and any medications the men were taking. The results showed that the higher a man's weight, the higher was his likelihood of having other risk factors for cardiovascular disease