肥胖与健康能够和谐共存?

Back now with our series of this week on women’s health. Tonight the question: there is no other way to ask it, can you be fat and fit at the same time. The answer may surprise a lot of women who wage a life long battle with their weight. Our story tonight, from our chief medical editor Doctor Nancy Snyderman.

Two women, both in their early fifties, one got a perfect bill of health from her             cardiologist, but the other got a wake-up call and alert she has significant heart disease requiring emergency surgery.  Miami cardiologist Arthur Agatston says how a woman looks and the familiar term body mass index or BMI can be very deceiving. “The fact is you can be overweight and very healthy, and you can be fairly thin but have a relatively high percentage of body fat and be high risk for future heart attack and stroke.” That described Attica Celia. Her BMI, the standard classification of fitness, had always been in the normal range, but her blood work told a different story. “She was a little bit what we call normal weight obesity. Er, she had some metabolic problems, she had a high bad cholesterol” But she had no warning of the extensive heart disease that eventually landed her in surgery, “Because I was thin, because I had never been sick”

And though Melanie Fox might not look the idea of perfect health, her doctor says she is. “Well, this is Melanie’s heart, and you say a young, healthy heart. Her cholesterol values which were usually very high in overweight people are in fact completely normal.”

“Melanie is not going to have a heart attack or a stroke.”

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

Even with regular exercise, her BMI is 29.8, thirty is considered obese.

But BMI doesn’t distinguish the weight of dangerous body fat from fat free mass like muscle and bone. And that’s why most experts believe that more accurate measures of fitness should be used instead. Like measuring waist circumference, which for man should be less than 40 inches around and for women less than 35. So, is it possible to be fat but fit?

“We’re not saying it’s OK to just gain weight, but healthy and fit can come in many sizes.” 

Doctor Nancy Snyderman, NBC news, New York.

A reminder: all our women’s health reports can be found on our website, that’s nightly.msnbc.com. By the way, if you have questions for Doctor Nancy Snyderman, you can submit them there also on the website she’ll answer as many she can get to as the week goes on.