Overweight people with big abdomens are in much worse health than are equally obese people whose fat is distributed around the hips and limbs, Medical World News (26#3:74) reports.
In people who are equally overweight, abdominal obesity carries about five times as much risk of heart attack and stroke as does fat deposited elsewhere. Fat in the abdomen, apparently, is much more “active”, so far as the body’s chemistry is concerned, than fat elsewhere. It is associated with elevation of the blood cholesterol levels, sluggishness of fat disposal by the liver, and impairment of insulin secretion in response to sugary meals.
The easiest way to determine a fat person’s degree of risk from this type of obesity, according to the News, is to measure the circumferences both the waist and hips. When the waist-to-hips ratio is above 1.0 in men, or above 0.8 in women, the risk of heart attack and stroke is five to 10 times greater than normal.
Men, it has been found, are more prone than women to abdominal obesity, even though in general, they are less likely to be overweight. Beer drinkers had better beware.
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