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Belly Fat Doubles Death Risk
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Belly Fat Doubles Death Risk
Nov 15, 2008
(WebMD)Belly fat has been linked to an increased risk of heart disease and diabetes. Now an important new study links belly fat to early death.
Researchers followed about 360,000 Europeans enrolled in one of the largest and longest health studies in the world.
They found that people with the most belly fat had about double the risk of dying prematurely of the people with the least amount of belly fat. Death risk increased with waist circumference, whether the participants were overweight or not.
The study provides some of the strongest evidence yet linking belly fat to early death, says lead author Tobias Pischon, MD, MPH. It appears in the Nov. 12 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine.
"Our study shows that accumulating excess fat around your middle can put your health at risk even if your weight is normal," Pischon says. "There aren't many simple individual characteristics that can increase a person's risk of premature death to this extent, independent of smoking and drinking."
Belly Fat Research
It has long been recognized that people who carry their excess weight around their middles - those who are apple-shaped instead of pear-shaped - have a higher risk for heart attacks and strokes.
Recent research also suggests a link between belly fat and a range of other diseases, including diabetes, some cancers, and even age-related dementias.
But it has not been clear whether the increase in death risk associated with abdominal obesity occurs independently of recognized risk factors like general obesity, Pischon says.
The researchers used two measures of abdominal obesity - waist circumference and waist-to-hip ratio - in their attempt to better understand the role of belly fat in early death.
They examined data on 359,387 European adults followed for nearly 10 years who were enrolled in the larger, ongoing European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) health study.
During the follow-up period, 14,723 of the study participants died.
After adjusting for overweight and obesity, as measured by body mass index (BMI), waist circumference and waist-to-hip measurements were both independently associated with an increased risk for early death.
Specifically:
women).
"The most important result of our study is the finding that not just being overweight, but also the distribution of body fat, affects the risk of premature death," Pischon says.
The findings come as no surprise to University of Michigan cardiologist and
research scientist Daniel Eitzman, MD.
Work by Eitzman and colleagues in mice found that belly fat - also known as visceral fat - produces more inflammation than fat found in other areas of the body.
Inflammation is thought to play a key role in heart disease and a host of other chronic diseases.
Eitzman tells WebMD that measurement of waist circumference or waist-to-hip ratio are important for assessing the risk of inflammation-driven disease.
"Studies like this focus attention on the importance of measuring visceral fat, which is not now routinely done in clinical practice," he says.
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http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/11/13/health/webmd/main4598334.shtml#
Fighting the Fat Gene takes 3-4 hrs a day
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Fighting the fat gene takes 3-4 hours a day
Or you can always live like the Amish, new research shows The Associated Press updated 11:41 a.m. ET, Wed., Nov. 12, 2008
Maybe you CAN blame being fat on your genes. But there's a way to overcome that family history — just get three to four hours of moderate activity a day.
Sound pretty daunting?
Not for the Amish of Lancaster County, Pa., who were the focus of a new study on a common genetic variation that makes people more likely to gain weight. It turns out the variant's effects can be blocked with physical activity — lots of it.
Scientists believe about 30 percent of white people of European ancestry have this variant, including the Amish, and that may partly explain why so many people are overweight.
But fighting that fat factor may be easier in the Amish community's 19th century rural lifestyle. They don't use cars or modern appliances. Many of the men are farmers and carpenters, and the women, who are homemakers, often care for several children.
The researchers found that Amish people with the genetic variant were no more likely to be overweight than those who had the regular version of the gene — as long as they got three to four hours of moderate activity every day. That included things like brisk walking, housecleaning and gardening.
And while physical activity is recommended for just about everyone, the study suggests that people with the gene variation need to be especially vigilant about getting exercise.
"These findings emphasize the important role of physical activity in public health efforts to combat obesity, particularly in genetically susceptible people," the authors wrote in Monday's Archives of Internal Medicine.
Study co-author Dr. Soren Snitker of the University of Maryland acknowledged that it's unrealistic to expect most people to shun modern conveniences and return to a 19th century lifestyle for the sake of staying trim.
Every little bit helps
But he said every little bit helps, and that adding an extra few hours of activity daily might not be as hard as it seems.
Instead of watching TV for a few hours at night, take a brisk walk, he suggested. Or use stairs instead of elevators, walk instead of driving, or take up a structured exercise such as swimming.
Previous research based on self-reporting of physical activity has produced similar results. The new study used a more reliable measure — battery-operated monitoring devices worn round-the-clock for a week, said lead author Evadnie Rampersaud of the University of Miami.
More research is needed to see if similar results would be found in other racial and ethnic groups, said Amy Zlot, a genetics researcher with Oregon's Department of Human Services, who was not involved in the study.
The Amish study involved 704 people; blood samples determined which of those had a variation in the FTO gene linked to obesity. Among those with the variant, those who got about three or four hours of moderate physical activity a day weighed up to about 15 pounds less on average than the least active people.
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Fat Kids have Arteries of 45 Year Olds
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NEW ORLEANS — Obese children as young as 10 had the arteries of 45-year-olds and other heart abnormalities that greatly raise their risk of heart disease, say doctors who used ultrasound tests to take a peek inside.
"As the old saying goes, you're as old as your arteries are," said Dr. Geetha Raghuveer of Children's Hospital in Kansas City, who led one of the studies. "This is a wake-up call."
The studies were reported Tuesday at an American Heart Association conference.
About a third of American children are overweight and one-fifth are obese. Many parents think that "baby fat" will melt away as kids get older. But research increasingly shows that fat kids become fat adults, with higher risks for many health problems.
"Obesity is not benign in children and adolescents," said Dr. Robert Eckel, a former heart association president and cardiologist at the University of Colorado-Denver. It is why the American Academy of Pediatrics recently recommended cholesterol-lowering drugs for some kids, he noted.
Raghuveer wanted to see if early signs of damage could be documented. She and colleagues used painless ultrasound tests to measure the thickness of the wall of a major neck artery in 70 children, ages 10 to 16. Almost all had abnormal cholesterol and many were obese.
No one knows how thick a 10-year-old's artery should be, since they're not regularly checked for signs of heart disease, so researchers used tables for 45-year-olds, who often do get such exams.
The kids' "vascular age" was about 30 years older than their actual age, she found.
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/11/fat-kids-have-the-arterie_n_143115.html