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Just keeping your weight down is not enough to prevent you from dying an early death that's linked to fat. Hard new evidence shows you don't want to waste your waist to fat.
Researchers tracked nearly 360,000 Europeans and their bellies for a decade. They found those with the largest waists -- 40 inches or greater for men, 35 inches or greater for women -- were twice as likely to die prematurely as those with smaller waists.
So what makes belly fat, or visceral fat, so dangerous? "Fat actually secretes a lot of substances, and some estimates seem to suggest that visceral fat can release up to 100 different substances," explained epidemiologist Dr. Rachel Whitmer.
Those substances include inflammatory chemicals and hormones -- active agents that not only increase the risk of heart disease, stroke, Alzheimer's disease and cancer, but now premature death as well. The risk is there even if your body mass index (BMI) is normal.
United States doctors currently rely on BMI to determine whether a patient is overweight or obese. This study suggests doctors need to pull out their tape measures and measure bellies as well.
E-mail: drkim@ksl.com
