Research
Hormonal
Obesity acts as an independent risk factor and driver for cardiovascular diseases through mechanisms including insulin resistance, endothelial dysfunction, systemic inflammation, and neurohormonal activation, leading to hypertension, heart failure, coronary artery disease, and stroke.
High body weight is a major biological driver of heart disease, not just a cosmetic issue. Addressing it requires medical and public health strategies, not just willpower, because it triggers harmful biological changes like inflammation and high blood pressure.
StrongSupportsVERY_HIGH confidence
Excessive adiposity contributes to cardiometabolic dysregulation through a range of interrelated mechanisms, including insulin resistance, endothelial dysfunction, systemic inflammation, dyslipidemia, and neurohormonal activation leading to CVD complications such as hypertension, heart failure, coronary artery disease, and stroke
Why this rating
Based on global epidemiological data from NCD-RisC and GBD studies covering millions of individuals.
Source
The Weight of Cardiovascular Diseases: Addressing the Global Cardiovascular Crisis Associated with Obesity
Francisco López-Jiménez et al. · Global Heart · 2025
DOI 10.5334/gh.1451
narrative_reviewCited 4×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
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