If you’re significantly over your ideal body weight, you might feel that losing a few pounds won’t make a big difference to your health. However, a new study from the Washington University School of Medicine disputes this idea. According to this study, even a small amount of weight loss can pay off with measurable health benefits.
How much weight do you need to lose to lower your risk for health problems? As little as five percent of your body weight. For most people, that’s manageable.
What the Study Showed
In this study, a group of healthy, obese people were assigned to groups. Each group took part in a weight loss program. A quarter of the participants were asked to lose only a small amount of weight – 5% of their ideal body weight. The other participants lost 10% or 15% of their total body weight.
When they measured various markers for health in the groups, all of the participants had experienced health upgrades, even those who only lost 5% of their body weight. For a 200-pound person, a 5% weight loss is only 10 pounds.
Based on this study, even small achievable degrees of weight loss can pay off with substantial health dividends. While the participants who lost 10% or 15% of their body weight experienced greater improvements in health markers, everyone benefited, even those who only shed 5% of their total body weight.
Improvements in Insulin Sensitivity
Exactly how did the health of the participants improve? For one, their insulin sensitivity increased. Insulin sensitivity is a marker for overall health and a lower risk for health problems like heart disease and type 2 diabetes. When you have good insulin sensitivity, your pancreas doesn’t have to produce as much insulin to get glucose into cells. That bodes well for your health and risk of disease.
When insulin sensitivity drops, the opposite happens, your pancreas has to pump out more insulin to compensate for the fact that cells aren’t responding. As a result, you have higher levels of insulin circulating in your bloodstream. Higher circulating levels of insulin is linked to health problems like high blood pressure, heart disease, and metabolic syndrome. Improving insulin sensitivity is one of the most important things you can do to stay metabolically healthy.
Inflammation
The participants that lost 5% of their body weight or more also experienced changes in inflammatory markers, suggesting their bodies had become less inflamed. As you may know, recent research suggests low-grade tissue inflammation may play a role in a number of health problems, including heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, autoimmune diseases, and some forms of cancer.
How does weight loss reduce inflammation? Fat cells produce inflammatory compounds called cytokines that cause low-grade inflammation. Unlike the redness and heat you see and feel when you cut your finger, cytokines cause a more insidious, “silent” type of inflammation that causes slow tissue damage over many years.
When you combine improvements in insulin sensitivity with a reduction in inflammation, it’s not surprising the participants who lost weight, even as little as 5%, had a lower risk for disease, particularly heart disease and type 2 diabetes.
Exercise Also Improves Insulin Sensitivity
Losing a modest amount of weight, assuming you’re overweight, is one way to improve insulin sensitivity, but exercise also has a powerful impact on insulin sensitivity. Research shows a single moderate-intensity exercise session boosts glucose uptake by 40% and high-intensity interval training may lead to even greater improvements in metabolic health.
In addition, after an exercise session, insulin sensitivity remains high for up to 16 hours afterward. Contracting muscles are able to suck up glucose without the assistance of insulin, so your pancreas doesn’t have to work as hard.
It gets even more interesting. A study published in the journal Diabetes Care showed exercise improves insulin sensitivity even in people who don’t lose weight and don’t experience improvements in aerobic capacity. But when you combine exercise with a drop in body fat, you can expect even greater improvements in insulin sensitivity and metabolic health. Each has powerful effects on insulin sensitivity independent of the other.
Exercise as an Inflammation Fighter
Just as losing body fat reduces inflammation, so does regular aerobic exercise. When your muscles contract, muscle cells release a type of specialized cytokines called myokines. One such myokine is called IL-6. When muscle cells release IL-6, it stimulates the release of other anti-inflammatory cytokines and blocks the release of pro-inflammatory chemicals.
One marker for inflammation that you can easily measure is C-reactive protein or CRP. Studies show people who exercise moderately have C-reactive protein levels that are lower than their sedentary counterparts. An elevated CRP level is a marker not only for a body that’s inflamed but for a higher risk of heart disease.
Being sedentary and overweight are two drivers of inflammation, but so is not getting enough sleep, eating a processed food diet high in sugar, chronic stress, and exposure to outside forces like air pollution. You can’t control factors like air pollution but you can fight inflammation through moderate, but not excessive, amounts of exercise. Overtraining can actually turn on inflammatory pathways and increase stress hormones like cortisol.
The Bottom Line
You don’t have to lose large amounts of weight to enjoy the health benefits that weight loss offers. As this study shows, losing as little as 5% of your current body weight, if you’re overweight or obese, can improve your metabolic health and markers for inflammation. Combine it with regular exercise and you’ll experience even greater enhancements to your metabolic health.
References:
Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab. 2013 Aug 15;305(4):E496-506. doi: 10.1152/ajpendo.00128.2013. Epub 2013 Jun 25.
Diabetes Care March 2003 vol. 26 no. 3 944-945.
Int J Sports Med. 2000 Jan;21(1):1-12.
Medscape Family Medicine. “Exercise: How Does It Promote Insulin Sensitivity?”
Curr Pharm Des. 2012;18(28):4326-49.
Essays Biochem. 2006;42:105-17.
IDEA Health and Fitness Association. “Exercise and the Inflammation Process”
Science Daily. “Fitness Reduces Inflammation, Study Suggests”
Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2011 Jun;43(6):1002-9. doi: 10.1249/MSS.0b013e3182059eda.
Circulation. 2003; 108: e81-e85 doi: 10.1161/01.CIR.0000093381.57779.67.
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