Healthy and Overweight a Myth, Researchers Suggest

There is no such thing as overweight and healthy, researchers from the Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto concluded based on an analysis of eight prior studies designed to study the relationship between weight and a person's health. 

In all, the researchers compared information on more than 61,000 participants in order to determine whether "benign obesity" or "metabolically healthy obesity" exists.

These terms have been used in the past to refer to individuals considered metabolically healthy despite high levels of body fat.

Published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, the analysis suggests that metabolically healthy obese individuals face a higher risk of death and cardiovascular events over the long term when compared to metabolically healthy normal-weight individuals. 

Based on these results, the study's authors argue that there is no such thing as a being overweight and healthy.

"Being obese is associated with an increased risk for heart disease, even if an individual is otherwise 'metabolically healthy' and does not have the metabolic syndrome," the researchers wrote in the study. "There does not seem to be a 'healthy pattern' of increased weight."

The study has its limitations, as James Hill and Dr. Holly Wyatt of the University of Colorado point out in in an accompanying editorial. These include less-than-adequate data on the participants' health behaviors, as well as a lack of information about weight gain. The study also only focuses on total mortality and cardiovascular events, furthermore, and fails to include older subjects.

Still, the two note, "The results are consistent with the notion that obesity is a disease."

The American Medical Association controversially declared obesity a disease earlier this year at their annual meeting in Chicago. Though the shift in terminology carried with it no legal barings, the organization defended the decision saying they believed it would help increase focus and care on the issue.

Going forward, Hill and Wyatt home the study will prompt further research into the link between weight, metabolic health and overall health outcomes.

"This evidence fuels the debate about the existence of a subset of obese persons who are unlikely to have long-term negative health effects and should not be targeted for treatment," they argued.