Two new studies have thrown light on how obesity causes heart attack and also amazingly prevents it from being detrimental.
In one of the studies published in the European Heart Journal, researchers studies more than 1600 patients who underwent angioplasty. Such patients are usually given stents (a mental device placed permanently inside an artery during angioplasty) after a type of heart attack known as unstable angina or non-ST segment elevation. Surprisingly the findings showed that the obese and excessively obese patients were almost at the same level of risk of dying within a span of three years after the attack as people with normal weight.
One of the convincing explanation for this could be that obese people are more have their medical check-ups done at regular intervals and are able to have any heart related problems detected earlier and have treatments accordingly, which help them recover from heart attacks. Besides, it is observed that Heart attack patients who are obese are generally younger. Thus any change in the body that occur with obesity gets noticed and helps in detecting further problems, the study said.
The second study was conducted at a meeting of the American Society of Echocardiography. Here the researchers reported that weight gain is associated with a thickening of muscle in the left ventricle – that part of the heart, which acts as a pump. So if this aspect is detected early, then the problem of obesity can also be handled effectively. Thus the co-relation of obesity and heart attack is not necessarily a negative one – it can rather help patients get timely remedy and keep off their physical problems.