Obese men may be less physically fit than obese women, perhaps because they are more likely to have diabetes or pre-diabetes and tend to have more abdominal fat, Dutch researchers reported on Monday (July 11).
A study of 56 morbidly obese men and women waiting for weight-reduction surgery showed that although the men and women in general were just as overweight, the women were better able to tolerate exercise.
This is probably because of how their body fat was distributed, the team at Hospital Reinier de Graaf in Groep, Netherlands, found.
And this, in turn, could be a factor of how they process sugar and other simple carbohydrates, the researchers said. They found more of the men had a pre-diabetic condition called carbohydrate intolerance.
"Carbohydrate intolerance - the inability to metabolise sugar found in carbohydrates - may lead to a build-up of fat deposits on muscle tissue, which can cause a person to gain weight and, eventually, impair physical endurance," said Dr Emile Dubois, who worked on the study.
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