FATTY MUSCLES MAY CREATE HEALTH RISKS REGARDLESS OF BODY INDEX

    

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People with pockets of fat hidden inside their muscles are at a higher risk of dying or being hospitalized from a heart attack or heart failure, regardless of their body mass index, according to research published in the European Heart Journal today (Monday).

Marbled steak might be a delicacy, but fat-streaked human muscles? That's a different story. While chefs prize the delicate white lines running through beef, scientists have wondered what this fat means for human health.

A groundbreaking study has just revealed a new insight into heart disease risk. What's hiding in your muscles might matter more than what's showing on your waistline.

Dr. Viviany Taqueti, who runs the Cardiac Stress Lab at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital, puts it bluntly: we've been looking at obesity all wrong. That BMI number your doctor obsesses over? It might be missing the bigger picture, especially for women, where not all fat is created equal.

Think of your muscles like a marbled steak. Some people's muscles are lean, while others have tiny rivers of fat running through them. This "intermuscular fat" isn't just hanging out there - it's actively messing with your heart health in ways that might surprise you.

The research team tracked 669 people who came in worried about chest pain or breathing troubles. These weren't typical heart patients with clogged arteries—their coronary arteries looked clear. But here's where it gets interesting: using serious high-tech scanning (PET/CT for the science nerds), the team found something nobody was looking for.

For every tiny 1% increase in this muscle fat, people's risk of heart problems shot up by 7%. That's huge. And if someone had both fatty muscles and problems with their heart's tiny blood vessels? They were in real trouble.

But here's the plot twist: the fat right under your skin - the kind you can pinch - isn't the villain in this story. It's precisely the fat hiding inside your muscles that's causing all the drama.

"It's like having sugar in your gas tank," Dr. Taqueti explains (okay, she didn't say that, but that's essentially what's happening). This muscle fat triggers inflammation and messes with how your body handles sugar, eventually damaging blood vessels.

The frustrating part is that we still don't know how to fix it. Those fancy new weight-loss drugs everyone's talking about? We're unsure if they'll help clear out this muscle fat or target the more visible fat elsewhere.

Dr. Ranil de Silva and his colleagues at Imperial College London chimed in with what scientists do best—a call for more research. They were particularly intrigued because this study mainly focused on women historically underrepresented in heart research.

The bottom line? Your bathroom scale might lie to you - or at least not telling the truth. The real action is happening deep inside your muscles, where fat can lurk unseen, silently increasing your risk of heart problems regardless of what that BMI calculator says.

Scientists are now racing to figure out how to spot these high-risk patients earlier and, more importantly, how to help them. Whether through exercise, diet, those trendy new weight-loss shots, or something else entirely, the hunt is on for solutions to this hidden health threat.

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