Yo-yo weight loss diets, but also fluctuations in blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar can increase the risk of heart attack and stroke in healthy people, points out this Korean study, published in Circulation, the journal of the American Heart Association. A well-documented reminder from the analysis of data from more than 6 million participants: nothing beats good metabolic stability and maintaining a healthy weight to avoid any cardiovascular event.
While the study ultimately tracks the various known factors of metabolic syndrome, and their variation, it is the first to suggest that high variability in these risk factors has a negative impact on relatively healthy people. The study is also the first to report that having more than one of these highly variable factors increases cardiovascular risk.
More than 6 million participants: this is indeed the analysis of data from the Korean health insurance system, i.e. 6,748,773 people who have never had a heart attack and are free from diabetes, hypertension or hypercholesterolemia at the start of the study. All participants underwent at least 3 health examinations between 2005 and 2012 which, in particular, documented their body weight, fasting blood sugar, systolic blood pressure and total cholesterol level. Compared to people who have maintained stable measurements for an average follow-up period of 5.5 years, participants with the greatest variability—that is, variability in the top quartile—have an increased risk of:
- 127% death;
- 43% heart attack;
- 41% stroke.
Variability, improvement in measurements or not: Since high variability can result from positive or negative changes, the researchers separately examined the effect of variability in participants based on improvement vs deterioration of 5% or more of each measure in question. However, improvement or deterioration, in these 2 cases, the variability of the measures is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular event.
Paying attention to the variability of these different factors should therefore be part of the primary health assessment, whether it is variation in body weight, blood pressure, cholesterol level and/or blood sugar. Along the same lines, "trying to stabilize these measurements can be an important step in improving health," says Dr. Seung-Hwan Lee, lead author of the study and professor of endocrinology at the University College of Medicine the Catholic University of Korea in Seoul.
Finally, while this study is observational and therefore does not demonstrate a causal relationship between high variability and the risk of heart attack, stroke or death, its results confirm those of previous research carried out on other continents.
It should be noted that in terms of health, nothing beats maintaining the various markers within the range of recommended values.
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