• Posted October 16, 2025

Stronger Muscles Might Fight Organ Damage From Excess Fat, Study Says

Stronger muscles might be able to ward off some of the organ damage associated with obesity.

People with excess body fat who also had stronger handgrip strength were less likely to develop obesity-related heart, liver or kidney damage, researchers reported Oct. 15 in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.

They were also less likely to die early, researchers noted.

“Our findings show that muscle strength is a powerful, early sign of who is most at risk of developing obesity-induced organ dysfunctions among people with excess body fat,” researcher Dr. Yun Shen said in a news release. He’s an assistant professor of chronic disease epidemiology at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, La.

“Because grip strength is easy to measure and strength can be improved with weight training, this research points to a practical, low‑cost way to identify at‑risk individuals and to act early,” Shen said.

For the study, researchers analyzed data on more than 93,000 participants in the UK Biobank, a large-scale health research project in the United Kingdom. The team followed these people for an average of more than 13 years.

They specifically focused on people with “preclinical obesity,” when body fat is higher than average but obesity has not caused organ-related health problems.

Results showed that as handgrip strength increased among the participants, people gained significantly reduced risk of health problems related to obesity.

Black people, women and non-smokers appeared to benefit most from greater muscle strength, the study showed.

Muscle mass might help people better fight off inflammation that’s associated with excess fat, researchers said. 

“These findings underscore the importance of improving muscle mass and strength in preclinical obesity,” researchers concluded in their paper.

However, researchers noted that their study can only show an association, rather than a cause-and-effect relationship, between muscle strength and lower risk from obesity. Further studies are needed to validate the findings.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more on the health consequences of obesity.

SOURCES: The Endocrine Society, news release, Oct. 15, 2025; Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, Oct. 15, 2025