Obese People Can Reduce Risk of Stroke, Heart Disease by Lowering Blood Pressure, Cholesterol and Blood Sugar

Controlling risk factors such as high blood pressure, serum cholesterol and blood glucose may halve the risk of heart diseases and stroke in overweight and obese people, according to a new finding.

Obesity ranks as the number one serious health issue in wealthier countries. This excess body weight drags along with it a myriad of diseases that are a great threat to life. But a new finding states that  obesity related health problems such as stroke and heart diseases can be lowered by treating the risk factors.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), since 1980 obesity has nearly doubled worldwide and apart from the adults, nearly 40 million kids below the age of five were reported to be overweight in 2011. Obesity and overweight are the fifth leading risks for global deaths.

On analyzing the health data of 97 prospective studies that included nearly 1.8 million people over the past 57 years, the researchers revealed that the elevated risk of heart disease or stroke in overweight and obese people is due to the excess body weight, which further doubles the chances of having blood pressure, high cholesterol and high blood glucose.

This new study was led by a team of researchers from the Imperial College London, Harvard School of Public Health and the University of Sydney. Through this study the researchers state that fighting obesity and excess body weight should be a major health concern and people can work toward it by controlling the risk factors by modifying their lifestyle and also use of medication. Above all, it is very crucial to maintain normal blood pressure as it poses the highest risk among the three metabolic factors and accounts for 31 percent  high risk of heart disease and 65 percent of high stroke risk.

Co-author Professor Majid Ezzati, from the School of Public Health at Imperial College London, said in a statement, "Controlling hypertension, cholesterol, and diabetes through medication is useful, but not enough to offset the harms of overweight and obesity.  So we need to need to find creative approaches that can curb and reverse the global obesity epidemic."

In a previous study the same research team had estimated that obesity leads to nearly 3.4 million annual deaths. They also claimed that nearly 1.4 billion adults of age 20 and above are obese or suffer from excess body mass.

Researchers had earlier speculated whether excess body mass triggers heart attacks and stroke by affecting other risk factors like glucose, cholesterol and blood pressure. And whether treating these risk factors can offset chances of being obese. The researchers noticed that nearly half of the elevated risk of heart disease is due to high blood pressure, serum cholesterol and blood glucose and also three quarters of high risk of stroke in obese people.

Such large long term population studies help researchers to untwine ever single factor and analyze the role of each in elevating the risk of diseases. Even if the obese person's blood sugar level, cholesterol and blood pressure are controlled, the person is still found to be susceptible to heart attacks and stroke, clearly signifying that these risk factors are triggered by other factors as well.

"Our results show that the harmful effects of being overweight or obese on heart disease and stroke partly occur by increasing blood pressure, serum cholesterol and blood glucose. Therefore, if we control these risk factors, for example through better diagnosis and treatment of hypertension, we can prevent some of the harmful effects of being overweight or obese," concludes senior author Goodarz Danaei, HSPH assistant professor of global health.

The report was published in the journal Lancet.