As Serious as a Heart Attack: Being Overweight Can Protect Your Ticker

For years, we’ve been told that being overweight is bad for our health (and it is!) but now medical researchers have revealed that you have a better chance of surviving a heart attack if you have a few extra pounds on you.

Confused? Yes, us too. In fact, the smarty pants at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) are calling it an “obesity paradox.”

The Irish Sun reports that researchers at UCLA have found that people with a high body mass index and a larger middle were at less risk of dying if they suffered from a heart attack.

The research, which is published in this month’s American Journal of Cardiology, found that men with a wider waist than 40 inches and women with a waist of 37 inches were more likely to survive a heart attack and avoid the need for a heart transplant or any other kind of cardiac treatment.

“Heart failure may prove to be one of the few health conditions where extra weight may prove to be protective,” said Dr Tamara Horwich, the leader of the research.

“We knew that obesity might provide a protective benefit for heart failure patients. But we didn’t know whether this obesity paradox applied specifically to women with heart failure, as well as men – and it does,” she added.

However, there may be a simple explanation as to why patients of a larger build tend to have better survival rates. The study showed that obese patients tend to seek treatment for a heart attack at an earlier stage because they feel the symptoms of one more. They tend to experience functional impairment as well, caused by excess body weight.

This means that they are likely to get diagnosed and treated faster.