A study of 35,000 people in Texas shows that getting fit is not as important as weight loss for lower blood pressure. The findings suggest that if you’re obese with a high body mass index (BMI) you should concentrate on losing weight before physical fitness.

This study, however, has a number of inconsistencies that cast doubt on the findings. They studied people who were both obese and physically fit. They found that a high fitness level had little positive effect on blood pressure, while losing weight did have an effect.

You have to ask just how fit obese people could be. Is this test realistic? I would suggest that the obese people were not really fit to begin with. Physical fitness in people of normal weight has been found to have a big influence on blood pressure.

Another problem with this study is that it assumes that obesity is a risk factor for hypertension. Another recent study, also very large, found that obesity was not in fact linked to high blood pressure. So the whole study is very suspicious.