How are obesity and heart disease related?
The exact way in which obesity increases the risk of coronary disease is uncertain. We know a number of things: we know that obesity is very frequently seen in a constellation of factors that we now talk about as making up the metabolic syndrome. People can have three, four, or five of these different factors. If you see them clustering together in someone, we know that they are increased risk. For example, people who have an increased waist circumference. They are not only obese but their weight is carried in the middle: they have abdominal obesity, belly fat. People who have high blood pressure, it doesn’t even have to be too much, a little high blood pressure, a little hypertension. People who have increased fasting glucose, that is they are insulin resistant. They have Type II Diabetes or they have Pre-Diabetes: they’re in early stages of it. People can have increased triglycerides: that is another kind of lipid or fat that circulates in the blood. Particularly with women, that see
