'Metabolic health' may be more important than body mass index

Washington

IS it possible to be both obese and healthy? It's true that obesity has long been associated with cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes and several forms of cancer, but a lingering question is the degree to which obesity itself actually contributes to poor health. For every study suggesting that as body mass index (BMI) increases, the risk of chronic disease and early death also increases, there are others demonstrating that people can be healthy - or unhealthy - at almost any body weight.

For example, a study published in July in the Lancet examined data from more than 10 million people from four continents and found that BMI outside the normal range - both underweight and overweight - was associated with an increased risk of poor health and early death. However, a similar study of more than 300,000 South Korean adults, also published in July, concluded that something called "metabolic health" was more important than BMI when it comes to estimating future health risk.