Ridiculous Study of the Week: Obesity and Heart Disease
A new British study tried to really break new ground when it found that “obesity increases the risk for heart attacks, strokes and high blood pressure, and the risk increases the more fat one carries around the waist.”
Shocking.
Wait, there’s more:
“The higher total body fat or fat around the abdomen, the greater the risk of heart disease and stroke in individuals without existing disease,” said lead researcher Dr. Stamatina Iliodromiti. She is a clinical lecturer in obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Glasgow in Scotland. “There is no protective effect of fat, as some people believe.”
Welcome to research circa 1940s. As Yogi Berra would say, “It’s like deja vu all over again.”
I see the lead researcher was an OB-Gyn. Maybe they didn’t get the memo.
I blame the academia game. To compete as a worthy in academia, article count matters. And it is rare to find a reviewer anymore to vote down redundancy. Therefore, medicine marks time for most intellectual inquiries. There is little extension of knowledge; everyone can have a crack at publishing stuff once again. The upward flow of clinical problems into research is not seen as anything but a distraction.