Why is it considered unhealthy if someone is overweight even if all their blood tests, blood pressure, etc. all come back at healthy levels?

Question

Assumimg that being overweight is due to fat, not muscle.

In: 1317

Answer 1

Most of the comments here refer to additional physical mass and the problems that arise from it. While additional mass will bring problems and lead to greater wear and tear of weight bearing joints it doesn’t greatly effect the working of organs. Human boday has great capacity and we see athletes with a lot of body mass that are otherwise healthy.
The problem with fat is multifactorial but the most important is the hormones it produces (this is an area of active research). These hormones have multiple detrimental effects on the over all health. Additionally, an obese person is most likely to have a sesentary life style and bad eating habits that lead to accumulation of fats in arteries and thus leading to heart disease and stroke. I would like to point out that a person with normal body weight with bad eating habits is equally at riak for this.
Lastly, we are still finding underlying mechanisms for the detrimental effects of obesity. Statistics show it is bad but we really don’t know all the mechanisms it leads to increased morbidity.