Abdominal obesity is an independent risk factor for the development of type 2 diabetes mellitus and cardiovascular disease. It doesn’t matter how much you weigh or what your body mass index is. If the belly is large, it can lead to many health problems.
How to understand that obesity is abdominal
Abdominal obesity is a waist circumference of 94 cm for men and 80 cm for women. The criteria apply only to members of the European race. Waist circumference is measured along the mid-axillary line, midway between the top of the iliac crest and the lower edge of the last rib.
Other names for abdominal obesity:
- visceral;
- android;
- by male type.
Abdominal obesity causes arterial hypertension (high blood pressure), dyslipidemia (high cholesterol) and carbohydrate metabolism disorders (high sugar). With this type of fat deposition, it accumulates mainly not under the skin, but near the internal organs.
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Why visceral fat is bad for health
Adipose tissue forms many substances:
- hormones – leptin, adiponectin, resistin;
- inflammatory cytokines – tumor necrosis factor alpha, interleukin-6;
- proteins of the renin-angiotensin system that regulates blood pressure;
- plasminogen activator-1 inhibitor (involved in blood clotting).
In adipose tissue, sex hormones and glucocorticoids are produced and metabolized. Therefore, with obesity, metabolic processes in the body are disturbed: the heart, liver, blood vessels, reproductive function and eating behavior suffer. Abdominal obesity increases the risk of metabolically associated fatty liver disease (fatty liver) and is one of the criteria for the diagnosis of this pathology.
What is dangerous fatty liver on the background of abdominal obesity
Fatty liver can progress to steatohepatitis (inflammation of the liver) and sometimes to hepatocellular carcinoma (liver cancer). Some researchers believe that fatty liver, even more than visceral fat, provokes the development of insulin resistance (disturbances in carbohydrate metabolism).
Fatty liver increases the risk of cardiovascular disease by 3.2 times due to:
- disorders of fat metabolism (increased blood levels of total cholesterol, LDL and triglycerides);
- rapid development of atherosclerosis (deposits of cholesterol plaques on the walls of blood vessels);
- oxidative stress (cell damage due to oxidation);
- subclinical (asymptomatic) inflammation;
- endothelial dysfunction (impaired function of the inner layer of blood vessels);
- violations of the secretion of adiponectin, which is an anti-inflammatory hormone and prevents the “clogging” of blood vessels.
What can you do to protect yourself from deadly diseases?
You need to lose weight and exercise. It has been proven that 30-40 minutes of physical activity 3 times a week for a year can get rid of liver obesity. At the same time, there is no difference whether it is aerobic exercise or physical education with weighting. But 40% of people say they don’t have time to exercise, and another 30% say it’s cold to exercise in winter, hot in summer, and wet in spring and autumn.
Nutrition with a deficit of 500-750 kcal per day, a decrease in the amount of fat and an increase in the amount of vegetables and fish also relieves the liver of fat. But 48% of people honestly say they don’t want to diet. Therefore, drugs based on ursodeoxycholic acid (ursosan) are used for fatty liver, and statins should be taken for high cholesterol or dyslipidemia.
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