Women's obesity opportunity window

Tuesday September 3rd, 2013

Women who become obese after giving birth do not face any extra risk of heart attack until other health factors start to deteriorate, researchers reported yesterday.

Doctors said there was a "window of opportunity" for women to lose weight before they suffered any risk to their health.

Danish researchers studied more than 260,000 women who had recently given birth.

They said that as long as women remained "metabolically healthy" they faced no extra risk from obesity.

Metabolic disorders include high blood pressure, diabetes and high cholesterol. Women are at risk of developing diabetes and high blood pressure during pregnancy.

The findings were reported to the conference of the European Society of Cardiology in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Researcher Dr Michelle Schmiegelow said: "Being overweight but free of metabolic disorders does not seem to be associated with an increased risk in young women in the short term.

"However, development of metabolic disorders, for which obesity is a major determinant, is associated with a marked increase in cardiovascular risk, especially in overweight women even in the short term."

She added: "Because obesity markedly increases the risk of developing these metabolic disorders, these women most likely have a window of opportunity to lose weight and change their prognosis."

Tags: Childbirth and Pregnancy | Diabetes | Diet & Food | Europe | Heart Health | Women's Health & Gynaecology

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