Obesity Cuts Risk of Dying After Heart Attack – Yahoo! News

Obesity Cuts Risk of Dying After Heart Attack – Yahoo! News:

“Once a heart attack has occurred and been optimally treated, obese patients switch to a more favorable prognosis compared to normal-weight patients,”

Here’s one that at first glance might make you go Hmm…..

If you are overweight and have a heart attack, you’re more likely to get over it than if you’re normal weight.

Hmm….

But reality is in the details here. This isn’t a hint you should go have another Big Mac.

First, heavier heart attack patients tend to be younger; they’re having them at an earlier age. And those patients also tend to be under treatment for other things already — using ace inhibitors, beta blockers and statins, to name the most common drugs.

All of which may well affect survivability and recovery, much as they found a baby asprin a day did.

To me, if you read behind the headline, that the typical overweight patient is younger is the most telling stat. It’s not so much that the weight is driving the body to failure SOONER — but for a reason unknown right now, if it does fail, it can heal more easily than later in life.

That, of course, probably surprises nobody who’s hit middle age. Nothing heals as fast for me today as it idd when I was 25, whether it’s a twisted ankle or the results of my argument with a rose bush while attempting to prune it. So this doesn’t suprise me, either. But I don’t take it as a reason to stay overweight, not in any rational universe.

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