What's the Link Between Healthy Weight and Heart Disease Prevention?
To perform its best, your heart needs a healthy bodyweight. That’s because excess fat can hinder your heart’s function in all sorts of ways. To understand the link between maintaining a healthy weight and heart disease prevention, you have to know how an unhealthy weight can make life tough for your body’s hardest working muscle.
How Excess Weight Burdens Your Heart
Too much weight increases your risk for metabolic syndrome. This is a group of factors that puts you at higher risk for cardiovascular disease, including:
- A high level of triglycerides (a type of fat) in your blood
- A low level of high-density lipoprotein (“good”) cholesterol in your blood
- Excess stomach fat
- High blood pressure
- High blood sugar
Metabolic syndrome does more than raise your risk of developing heart disease or having a stroke. It also increases your likelihood of developing diabetes, another cardiovascular disease risk factor.
Excess weight forces your heart to take on extra responsibility by pumping more blood to more tissue.
“If you have more adipose [fat] tissue, you have to develop more tiny blood vessels to reach it,” said Kash Vahdat, M.D., FACC, advanced heart failure specialist and noninvasive medical director at CHRISTUS Good Shepherd Health System. “When that occurs, blood pressure tends to go up.”
Obesity can change the structure of the heart and blood vessels down to the cells.
“Obesity causes an increase in chamber size in the heart, including enlargement of the ventricles, which are the lower chambers,” Dr. Vahdat said. “Obesity can lead to early-onset atherosclerosis. That’s the process of plaque accumulation on the walls of arteries that can reduce or block blood flow. Excess fat causes abnormal remodeling of the endothelial cells of the heart and blood vessels.”
Then there’s the link between obesity and inflammation. Obesity can restrict the release of a hormone that keeps inflammation in check. Increased inflammation can alter the cells that form the lining of the heart’s arteries.
Healthy Weight Helps Prevent Heart Disease
When you maintain a healthy weight, your heart doesn’t have to use as much effort to pump blood. In short, it works more efficiently. A healthy weight also can reduce your risk of heart attack, stroke, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and other cardiovascular conditions.
What, exactly, is a healthy weight? One way of defining it is by using body mass index (BMI). BMI uses a person’s height and weight to calculate body fat. A normal BMI is 18.5–24.9. An individual is considered overweight if he or she has a BMI of 25.0–29.9. A BMI higher than 30 indicates obesity, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Lose Weight With a Healthy Lifestyle
The most effective ways to get to and maintain a healthy weight are also the most fundamental: a heart-healthy diet and regular physical activity. Both are needed to lose weight, and the latter can help you keep weight off once you reach your goal. Exercising and eating healthy can seem daunting, but the key is to look for (or create) opportunities in your daily routine to do both.
“I tell my patients that it’s important to take a piece of their day, just 30 minutes, and do something active that they enjoy,” Dr. Vahdat says. “If, for example, a patient is able to dance and likes to do it, she should dance.”
Give your diet a makeover a few heart-healthy swaps at a time. For breakfast, try Greek yogurt with granola and strawberries instead of a bowl of sugary cereal. Use “no salt added” canned goods to make soups and casseroles instead of products that are high in sodium.
Over time, many small wins can add up to a big victory for your heart.
Still have questions about your heart health? Make an appointment with your primary care provider today.