Hormonal
Obesity is a primary multifactorial disease (adiposopathy) driven by pathological adipose tissue dysfunction, not merely excess weight, and requires diagnosis based on body fat percentage and metabolic risk rather than BMI alone.
Stop using BMI as your sole health metric. If you have a normal BMI but feel unwell or have metabolic issues, ask for a body composition analysis (like DXA or BIA) to check your actual body fat percentage and visceral fat. Recognizing obesity as a disease (adiposopathy) helps access proper medical care rather than just diet advice.
Obesity may be viewed as a multifactorial pathology and chronic low-grade inflammatory disease... The most widely used parameter for diagnosis, body mass index (BMI) is not suitable for assessing the body fat. In fact, several studies demonstrate that BMI alone cannot define obesity, which consists not so much in weight gain as in excess fat mass.
Why this rating
This is a review paper citing multiple epidemiological and clinical studies, but it does not present new primary experimental data.
Source
Why primary obesity is a disease?
Antonino De Lorenzo et al. · Journal of Translational Medicine · 2019
DOI 10.1186/s12967-019-1919-y
More from this paper
- The 'Obesity Paradox' (lower mortality in obese patients with certain chronic diseases) is largely an artifact of using BMI, which fails to distinguish between high fat mass and high muscle mass, and ignores the inflammatory status of visceral fat.Good
- Normal Weight Obesity (NWO) is a distinct phenotype characterized by normal BMI but high body fat percentage (>30% women, >25% men) and low lean mass, carrying significant cardiovascular and metabolic risk.Good
Related findings · Hormonal
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This is one finding among thousands. Every one is graded and traced to its source, so you can see what the evidence actually supports. Browse the research →