Waist more important than weight in checking obesity?
The type of fat and its location may be more important that the Body Mass Index (BMI) – abdominal girth is the really the figure to check out for overall health.
Even with a normal BMI a big gut – a ‘beer gut’, a ‘pot belly’, a middle aged spread – means the risk of serious chronic disease.
US researchers looked at 2,700 men and women in Dallas, Texas aged 18-65, measuring their body weight, height, waist circumference, and waist-to-hip ratio; and then gave them a battery of medical tests, including MRI scans of their abdomen and scans of their coronary arteries to see if they had atherosclerosis, the disease of the arteries that causes heart attacks.
They found that even a small increase in the waist-to-hip ratio increased the risk of heart disease even if the person’s BMI was normal. They published their findings in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
BMI is a rough measure of obesity –but fat that is located in the abdomen seems to be much more dangerous than fat elsewhere, like the hips and buttocks. Fat in the abdomen – visceral fat – is stored in and around the internal organs in the abdomen. Abdominal fat accelerates atherosclerosis.
