These symptoms of women are also related to leg thickness

No matter how you understand "beautiful legs", thickness is probably a very important indicator. Legs that are too thick, even if they are as smooth as jade, probably cannot be called "beautiful legs". This year, a study on leg circumference and health was published in the British medical journal BMJ. I wonder if it will cause panic among women with beautiful legs. The report said: "When a person's thigh circumference is below 60 cm, the incidence and mortality of cardiovascular disease increase as it decreases"!

It is possible that leg circumference and cardiovascular disease and mortality are just a side effect of each other, not a causal relationship.

Statistics show that there is a critical value for leg circumference for both men and women. Below that value, the thinner the legs, the higher the incidence and mortality of cardiovascular disease; above that critical value, there is no effect. Using different statistical models, this critical value varies slightly, roughly between 55 and 60 cm. Therefore, the researchers took 60 cm as a dividing line and made the conclusions mentioned above.

At the same time as publishing this paper, the journal also published an editorial commentary to provide a professional interpretation of the research. The review found several problems with this study:

First, is the relationship between leg circumference and cardiovascular morbidity and mortality real? Or is it an illusion?

Although the factors that are currently known to affect cardiovascular disease were eliminated in the statistical analysis, there may still be unknown factors. Are those unknown factors causing this illusion? Although a survey of more than 2,000 people is not a small number, a survey with a larger sample size is still needed for further confirmation.

Second, biologically, how do we explain that small leg circumference increases the incidence of cardiovascular disease?

People with thick legs should weigh more, and it is a generally recognized conclusion that heavy weight is not good for cardiovascular health. Although the author cited a study by others, it was believed that small leg circumference may lead to reduced lower limb muscle, and the adverse effects of insufficient lower limb muscle on cardiovascular health outweigh the beneficial effects of weight loss. Commentators point out that research in this area is still insufficient, so this reason is not very sufficient.

Third, is there any practical value in using this "leg circumference" indicator to predict the risk of cardiovascular disease?

In the field of health, people have proposed several physical indicators to make such predictions, such as body weight index, waist circumference, hip circumference, waist-to-hip ratio, body fat percentage, blood lipids, cholesterol, etc. Is this new "leg circumference" indicator more accurate than these existing indicators? The commentators' answer is: "I don't know." The findings also haven't been tested - that is, used to make predictions about a group of people and then compared with actual results - so there's no way of knowing whether its predictions are accurate.

Fourth, what is the incidence of cardiovascular disease caused by the increase in leg circumference?

This is a crucial point. When it comes to the risks brought by a certain indicator, we need to not only be concerned about “whether it exists” but also “how big it is”. The increased incidence of cardiovascular disease caused by a decrease in leg circumference is not significant. For example, the incidence rate of people with the thinnest legs (calculated as 2.5% of the population) is only more than twice that of people with leg circumference above the critical value.

Fifth, does making thighs thicker through artificial intervention (such as physical training) help cardiovascular health?

In short, such a serious study published in an authoritative academic journal still has many loopholes in the eyes of academic peers. Scientifically, it still requires more and more detailed research to confirm or deny it. Before this, fashionable women can just treat it as entertainment. For example, women with thick legs can comfort themselves like this: I have thick legs, I am healthy! And women with beautiful legs don’t have to worry about it: there is not enough evidence to support that conclusion!