Are you Fat with Huge Belly Don’t worry, the main advantage is reduces sudden cardiac death

As pot belly expands, sudden cardiac death risk shrinks

Being skinny confers no advantage when it comes to the risk of dying suddenly from cardiac causes, say researchers. In fact, boffins at the University of Rochester Medical Center found that non-obese heart failure patients - including overweight, normal and underweight patients - had a 76 per cent increase in risk of sudden cardiac death compared to obese heart failure patients. Normal and underweight patients showed a startling 99 per cent increase in risk for sudden cardiac death compared to obese patients.

Now, it's still true that a beer belly, love handles, and other extra layers of fat boost your risk of developing diabetes, clogged arteries and high blood pressure. And if you're very fat, you're more likely to develop an enlarged, weakened heart that struggles to pump blood efficiently -- the physical condition known as heart failure. But, paradoxically, in this study of more than 1,200 heart failure patients, that excess weight seemed protective against sudden death.

The researchers can't explain why at this point. But they know it's not that the skinny people in their study were skinny because they were extra sick and so would be more likely to drop dead, in any event. And even normal-weight people in the study had a higher risk of sudden death than obese patients.
"Obese patients are hard on their bodies; many don't eat right, don't exercise, and many smoke," says Eric Hansen, a medical student at the University of Rochester, and co-author of the study. "If their bodies are surviving this bad treatment, then perhaps they are better equipped, from a genetic standpoint, to live with heart failure."