Fat but Fit, Thin but Unfit
This is it. This is the big study that had the news wires buzzing. Some people are thin but unhealthy. Others are overweight, or even obese, but healthier than their thin counterparts.
This news came from NHANES, which is short for the National Health and Nutrition Surveys. NHANES are (there are more than one) large, long-term studies that look at the health of Americans over time. Thousands of people participate. Different aspects of health are examined through blood tests and physical exams. In this particular slice of NHANES, 5440 people participated. Blood pressure, height, weight, BMI were measured, and bloods were drawn to test for markers of diabetes and cardiovascular disease. For those of you who are interested, the bloods drawn were HDL (good cholesterol), triglycerides (another form of fat in the blood), glucose, CRP (a marker of inflammation and increased cardiovascular risk), and HOMA-IR (a marker of pre-diabetes).
After graduating from NYU School of Medicine in 1987, and completing my Internal Medicine residency at Lenox Hill Hospital in 1990, I went to work at the AIDS clinic at Bellevue.
