OVERWEIGHT AND HEART FAILURE

Let me first begin by wishing all of you a very Happy and Prosperous 2009.
The 22nd Dec 2008, online issue of Circulation, published an interesting article on a piece of work by Dr S Kenchaiah of Bringham and Women's, Boston, on data from the ongoing Physician Health Study ( PHS ). The PHS was initiated in 1982. It is an ongoing study of about 22,000 physicians, studying their health and disease patterns and have been ongoing for the last 27years and has given us much information about hypertension,, obesity, diabetes, use of aspirin, etc.
Anyway, Dr Kenchaiah and colleagues, looked into the correlation between obesity, overweight and heart failure and found that overweight physicians ( BMI 25-30 ) were about 50% more likely to develop heart failure compared to the lean physicians. Obviously, when they are obese, the likelihood of heart failure is about 80%. Obese, overweight, beware.
Also, exercise will help to reduce the incidence, but not necessarily will weight reduction. Exercise, until you break a sweat will help to reduce the possibility of heart failure.
Since this was a epidermiological study, it did not suggest possible reasons. I suppose the explanantion for overweight and heart failure, must be the increase incidence of hypertension, and diabetes in these overweight or obese physicians. Perhaps lack of exercise could also play a part. It is important to note that this study's definition of heart failure is mainly that of symptoms of breathlessness, leaving it as a very mixed bag of systolic, diastolic and perhaps even non-cardiac dyspnea. Not the most accurate way. Nonetheless, the message is taken that keeping lean and physically fit, lessens breathelessness, and that is good for the population.
Once again, Happy New Year.