As rates of obesity, as defined by body mass index (BMI), continue to climb in the United States, so have efforts to lose weight, including a new era of weight-loss drugs. Yet a new systematic review and meta-analysis published today in the British Journal of Sports Medicine found that cardiorespiratory fitness was a stronger predictor of both cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality than BMI. The researchers found that fit individuals across all BMI categories had statistically similar risks of death from all causes or cardiovascular disease.
By contrast, unfit individuals in all BMI categories showed two- to three-fold higher risks of both all-cause and cardiovascular disease mortality compared with normal weight fit individuals. In fact, obese fit individuals had significantly lower risk of death compared to normal weight unfit individuals. Fitness, it turns out, is far more important than fatness when it comes to mortality risk.
Our study found that obese fit individuals had a risk of death that was similar to that of normal weight fit individuals and close to one-half that of normal weight unfit individuals. Exercise is more than just a way to expend calories. It is excellent 'medicine' to optimize overall health and can largely reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and all-cause death for people of all sizes.
" Siddhartha Angadi, associate professor of exercise physiology at the University of Virginia School of Education and Human Development and corresponding .