Metabolically Healthy Obese Persons May Not Remain Healthy

Recent research indicated that a number of obese people are metabolically healthy. Several years ago, the CDC suggested that people who are a little overweight might be healthier than people of normal weight. And that assertion was counter intuitive. But the thought that someone who is obese can be healthy is even more counter intuitive. However, these people apparently exist. They are called metabolically healthy obese, or MHO. But the healthy state may not last.

Martgin Obin, a scientist with the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging, said that these MHOs are as fat as people who develop complications of obesity, yet they are protected from [obesity related] complications...' Obin indicated that if we can determine what protects these obese but healthy people from metabolic diseases, we can better understand the role that obesity plays in many diseases. Obin speculated that MHOs may have a healthier level of inflammation, and this healthier inflammation level keeps the MHOs healthier. While this could be true, new, more recent research indicates that some MHOs may not be healthy for the long term.

In an English study, 2422 men and women were tracked over an eight year period. And it was found that 44.5% of the MHOs transitioned from a healthy state to an unhealthy state over the eight year period. Further, the researchers indicated that what happened during the transition period could not be fully explained by the study participants' lifestyle. Specifically, the researchers concluded that "a healthy obesity phenotype is relatively unstable. Transition to an unhealthy state is characterized by multiple biological changes which are not fully explained by lifestyle risk factors."

So, understanding these unhealthy biological changes and why these changes are delayed in MHOs could give us insight into treating obesity. We could, perhaps, understand why the MHOs' cells remain healthy for a longer period of time than the cells in the unhealthy obese. This knowledge could be used to develop therapies that can make obese persons healthier while they endeavor to lose weight. This would give both the health care provider and the patient more time to deal with the obesity problem.

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