People who have too much body fat but also build and keep their muscle might be less likely to suffer serious health problems such as heart, liver, or kidney damage — or even die early, according to a new study published in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.
Obesity is commonly seen as a risk factor for diseases like heart problems and diabetes. However, researchers now consider it a long-term condition that can directly cause these illnesses.
Obesity is diagnosed when a person’s body mass index (BMI) is 30 or higher. BMI is a simple measure that uses height and weight to classify someone’s body size, but it doesn’t measure how much body fat they actually have.
The new term ‘preclinical obesity’ refers to having extra fat in the body that hasn’t yet caused major health problems, but still increases risks for many diseases like diabetes, heart disease, joint pain, and some cancers.
Doctors often use other tools besides BMI, like waist size or the ratio of waist to hips, to better understand the risks caused by extra body fat.
In this study, researchers looked at data from over 93,000 people in the UK Biobank. They focused on people with high body fat but no major obesity-related health issues yet.
They found that people with stronger muscles — especially those with a stronger handgrip — were less likely to develop serious diseases caused by obesity or die early. Muscle strength was linked to better protection, even when body fat was high.
Lead author Dr. Yun Shen said, ‘Grip strength is easy to test and can be improved with simple weight training. This makes it a practical and affordable way to identify people at higher risk early.’
The protective effect of muscle was also seen when using other ways to measure muscle, such as muscle-to-weight ratio and lean-to-weight ratio. In short, keeping your muscles strong may help protect your body — even if you have extra fat.
This research highlights how important muscle strength is for people with high body fat, offering a low-cost way to spot health risks early and possibly prevent future illness.
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The study is published in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.
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