Research

Mixed

High BMI is more strongly associated with adverse cardiovascular biomarker levels than physical inactivity, yet maintaining physical activity provides favorable biomarker profiles even within overweight or obese BMI categories.

Focus on maintaining a healthy body weight as the primary lever for improving cardiovascular biomarkers like CRP and cholesterol. However, do not neglect physical activity; even if you are overweight or obese, being physically active (≥1000 kcal/week) significantly improves your biomarker profile compared to being inactive. The best outcome is achieved by combining regular moderate activity with a normal BMI.

GoodQualifiesHIGH confidence
High BMI was more strongly related to adverse cardiovascular biomarker levels than physical inactivity. However, within BMI categories, physical activity was generally associated with more favorable cardiovascular biomarker levels than inactivity.
Samia Mora et al. · JAMA · 2006

Why this rating

Large sample size (n=27,158), rigorous statistical adjustment, but cross-sectional design limits causal inference.

Source

Association of Physical Activity and Body Mass Index With Novel and Traditional Cardiovascular Biomarkers in Women

Samia Mora et al. · JAMA · 2006

DOI 10.1001/jama.295.12.1412

cross_sectional · n=27158Cited 406×
Read the paper
DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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