Weight Maintenance Is Key to Cardio Risk Factors

Maintaining your weight at a steady level is important in keeping your cardiovascular risk factors under control, even if you start off overweight. Chapel Hill researchers analyzed changes in the risk factors in 3,200 men and women who maintained their weight over a 9 year period. At baseline, 35% of them were normal weight, 41% were overweight, and 23% were obese. Their findings have been published in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

For the whole group, there were increases in glucose (3 mg/dL) and triglycerides (10.1 mg/dL), and decreases in total cholesterol (-9.6 mg/dL), LDL-cholesterol (-9.9 mg/dL) and HDL-cholesterol -1.7 mg/dL); systolic blood pressure increased (7.9 mm Hg) but diastolic pressure decreased (-1.1 mm Hg).

What’s interesting (and a bit surprising) is that while those with normal weight at the outset had smaller increases in glucose than the other groups, they had less favorable changes in the lipids and diastolic blood pressure, compared with the obese subjects. In fact, the cardiovascular risk profile may even improve in obese people who maintain their weight.

This doesn’t mean, of course, that the absolute levels of cardiovascular risk were any less favorable in the obese – quite the reverse. Obesity is still dangerous . . .