A lack of adipose tissue may be more important for health than exercise, researchers think.
Skinny people have been studied much less than obese people. Now a Chinese-Scottish team of researchers filled in the lack of information.
What really keeps a person healthy and slim: a low amount of calories, plenty of exercise or an exceptionally fast metabolism – or all of these together? The answer became more specific when the group recruited slightly underweight volunteers for research.
Subjects had to have a body mass index of less than 18.5 but be in good health: for example, those with eating disorders or suffering from other diseases were screened from the crowd. The controls were a group of normal weight people with a body mass index between 18.5 and 25.
Like as you might have guessed, underweight people ate less than normal weight people. The surprise, on the other hand, was that they also moved less than those of normal weight.
“We expected that very slim people are really active,” says the professor John Speakman from the University of Aberdeen in the UK and the Shenzhen Institute of Technology in China in the research bulletin.
“It wasn’t like that. However, the resting metabolism of the thin ones was more lively than expected, which is related to the high concentrations of thyroid hormones.”
Thyroid hormones play a key role in weight control, but the connection to energy balance is complex, the group writes in their study. It was published by Cell Metabolism journali.
For research a total of more than 300 Chinese adults participated, and their activity and metabolism were closely monitored for two weeks. The amount of energy received and consumed was measured using a method based on hydrogen and oxygen isotopes, and activity was measured using motion sensors.
The analysis showed that those of normal weight ate 12 percent and exercised 23 percent more than those who were thin.
Despite the low level of activity, the blood values of thin people were better than those of normal weight.
“Values that indicate heart health, such as cholesterol content and blood pressure, were very good in very thin people,” says the lead author of the study Sumei Hu from Beijing University of Economics and Technology.
According to the researchers, the result suggests that the lack of adipose tissue may be more important for health than exercise.
In the follow-up study, the group plans to monitor not only the amount of energy, but also the composition of the diet and satiety.
In addition, the researchers plan to trace the genetic differences between underweight and normal weight individuals.
Read more: Why do some people not need to watch their weight? The secret lies in hormones, the researcher believes
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