Belly Fat Is the Worst for Your Heart

Selma Broeder / CC BY 2.0

You've heard of apple and pear body shapes, right? Well, it's the apple shape - with the extra weight mostly being stored around the waist - that is most associated with heart disease and other diseases like metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes. This abdominal fat seems to be more biologically active, potentially secreting inflammatory proteins that contribute to atherosclerosis plaque.

The bigger your waist, the higher your risk of developing heart failure - a condition where the heart isn't pumping enough blood out, and fluid and blood back up into the lungs and/or pool in the feet and legs.

According to a recent animal study:

• Belly fat brought on the most inflammation.
• Belly fat was linked to the worst atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries).

[Circulation online Jan. 22, 2008]

In adults at the lower end of the "overweight" range in body mass index, an increase in waist circumference of 10 centimeters was associated with a 15% higher risk of heart failure for women and 16% higher for men. [Circulation online April 7.2009]

Putting a Number to Your Waist
Measure your natural waist circumference (just above the navel) with a tape measure. If your body mass index (BMI) is 25 kg/m2 or greater (which is most of us), your goal for waist circumference, according to the American Heart Association, is:

Men: less than 40 inches
Women: less than 35 inches

But there is more to the belly fat story...

Waist-to-Hip Ratio May Be the Best Way to Measure Risk
Here's where it gets interesting. If you want to get the most accurate measure of potential risk from belly fat, measure your hips and calculate your waist-to-hip ratio. Fat around your hips doesn't appear to increase risk of heart disease at all. In fact, it may have a protective effect. Having a big waist with comparably big hips does not appear to be as troublesome as a big waist with small hips.

All of this is why I personally put more value on the waist measurement - and even better is the waist-to-hip ratio - than I do pounds on a scale. Pounds don't take into account your muscle or bone mass or where you tend to deposit extra body fat.

To get your waist-to-hip ratio, measure your waist circumference in inches and divide it by your hip circumference. An abnormal ratio is thought to be:

For women: 0.85 and above
For men: 1.0 and above

Yasser Alghofily / CC BY 2.0

It takes exercise and a healthy diet to lose the belly fat. But given the risks, it's healthier to eat an apple than to be one.


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The Downward Spiral

I saw it with my dad and I've seen it happen to friends' loved ones... I call it the downward spiral. This is when people get so obese or medically challenged that they can't be active. It becomes a downward spiral because the heavier or more medically challenged they get, the harder it is to exercise and be physically active and yet one of the only ways they can improve their situation medically is to be physically active.

Perhaps, like in my dad's case, the window of opportunity to "get with the program" while he still had legs that worked pretty well and the ability to exercise somewhat...came and went. Once there was neurological damage (he had type 2 diabetes) and even small amounts of physical activity were difficult, then it becomes even MORE challenging to lose weight and be active. Enter.... the downward spiral.

Various different reports have been coming out basically telling us that Americans are more (not less) obese than we were 10 years ago. What that tells me is that everything we have been doing as a nation and society to fix this problem over the past 10 years hasn't been working. All those billions of dollars spent (each year) on weight loss products, books and programs...have been a sickening waste of money. Looks like we need a plan B pretty darn quick.

There is no quick fix and America has to face that. Turning this obesity train around is going to take everything we've got...changing the environment we live in (to make healthy eating and regular exercise more possible), it's going to take helping people make permanent lifestyle changes, helping people deal with the personal issues that are contributing to binge-eating and overeating (if this is a factor for them personally), and it's going to take a whole lot of compassion. And we are going to have to do all of this while people still have a chance of turning their health around.

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Do Food Commercials Make You Eat More?

If you've ever wondered if watching advertisements for assorted types of processed food products encourages children to eat more, some research suggests your suspicions are more than warranted.

Researchers from the University of Liverpool in the United Kingdom, exposed 60 children between age 9 and 11, of varying weights, to both food advertisements and toy advertisement, followed by a cartoon and free food.

More food was eaten after the food advertisements than after the commercials for toys. Interestingly the obese children increased their consumption of food the most (134%) compared to overweight children (101%) and normal weight children (84%).

First of all, I'm not surprised by these results. That is the whole point of food advertising, isn't it? To encourage consumption of the product? If it didn't work, why would food and beverage companies continue to spend millions on advertising? It does appear, though, that obese and overweight children are particularly vulnerable to this and that in itself is alarming and worth noting to appropriate government agencies.

~~Elaine

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