So the next time you hear somebody bragging...

There are a number of so called lucky people who despite being overweight still do not suffer from high levels of cholesterol or from high blood pressure. These people are often extremely confident about their health and say that despite the fact that that they have excess weight it is not a health problem because of their normal cholesterol and blood pressure. However to a new research project which involved over 300,000 people concludes that people who are overweight and still have low cholesterol and normal blood pressure are still at a greater risk of suffering from heart disease.

The research done by Dutch scientists looked at clinical data from over twenty other studies that had looked at people who suffered heart attacks and high blood pressure over a period of time. The study factored in the things that could have skewed the results such as age, smoking, physical activity and even sex and concluded that people who were overweight had a 17 percent bigger chance of suffering from heart disease than normal weight people. They also concluded that if you were obese with a BMI of 30 plus you were 49 percent more probable to suffer from heart disease even if your cholesterol and blood pressure was normal.

The researchers also noted that the overweight people who did have high blood pressure and high cholesterol were much more likely to suffer from heart disease compared to overweight people who did not have the high blood pressure and high cholesterol levels. In fact they saw that you were almost twice as likely to have heart disease if you had these two conditions whether you were overweight or obese.

So the next time you hear somebody bragging that they are perfectly healthy despite being overweight you might like to remind them about this new research which shows that they are at a considerably greater risk of suffering from heart disease despite being otherwise healthy.