Why your ab fat can affect your diabetes risk and what to do about it.Q. I know that being overweight is a risk factor for diabetes, but does body shape, or where a person's fat is stored, make a difference too?
A. Yes, where you carry your fat is a predictor of your risk for developing diabetes. So whether you're an apple or pear shape matters.
It's long been recognized that a higher body mass index (BMI) is linked to a higher risk of developing diabetes. BMI is a rough estimate of how much excess fat a person may have. But this measure alone doesn't say anything about where a person's fat is distributed.
Another measure — taking a tape measure to determine a person's waist size — does. A wider waist tends to be larger because of excess body fat in the area. A 2006 study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that waist size was an independent indicator for diabetes. That is, the bigger the waist, the more likely men and women in the study were to develop the disease over a nine-year period. Even if a person is not obese, but has a bit of a gut, he or she still has an increased risk of diabetes. Having a waist circumference greater than 35 inches in women, and greater than 40 inches in men, is considered enough to increase risks of a variety of health conditions. But the researchers also found that there was an additive effect: Having both a higher BMI and a larger waist size increased the risk even more.
Fat in the belly has been linked to a variety of metabolic problems such as poor cholesterol, increased heart-disease risk, insulin resistance and diabetes. Of course, taking a waist circumference measurement doesn't really measure the amount of fat in the belly. A 2010 study in the Journal of Clinical Endocriniology & Metabolism aimed to get beyond waist size and actually measure abdominal fat.
For five years, researchers followed more than 30,000 non-diabetic women who were 40 years or older. The women were given body composition scans by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA). These scans are typically used to measure bone density, although they also assess the amount of body fat present in the trunk and limbs of the body. Results showed that women with more fat in the abdominal area had increased risks of developing diabetes. Those with the greatest proportion of ab fat had a 3.6 times greater risk of getting diabetes than the women with the least amount. This study did not distinguish between the type of fat found in the belly, whether it was comprised of mostly below-the-surface belly fat (the kind that jiggles) or deep visceral fat (fat packed around the organs). The deeper visceral fat has been found to be the more unhealthy kind.
So, if you do have a spare tire (or two), what should you do to decrease your risks of getting diabetes? First, know that even if diabetes runs in your family, you're not doomed to get it.
Now it's time to take action and do something about that jelly belly. What you don't want to do is plop on the floor and do a zillion crunches, situps or other core-strengthening moves. Not only can some of those exercises overstress your back, they do nothing to reduce fat around your middle. You can also resist the urge to splurge on an infomercial get-a-flat-belly-fast product.
What you should do is more cardio, or aerobic exercise, such as walking, running, dancing (Zumba counts) and cycling. In addition to moving your whole body more and eating more healthfully, you should also sit less. New research suggests that the more you sit — even if you exercise — the greater your risk of a variety of health conditions including diabetes.
A. Yes, where you carry your fat is a predictor of your risk for developing diabetes. So whether you're an apple or pear shape matters.
It's long been recognized that a higher body mass index (BMI) is linked to a higher risk of developing diabetes. BMI is a rough estimate of how much excess fat a person may have. But this measure alone doesn't say anything about where a person's fat is distributed.
Another measure — taking a tape measure to determine a person's waist size — does. A wider waist tends to be larger because of excess body fat in the area. A 2006 study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that waist size was an independent indicator for diabetes. That is, the bigger the waist, the more likely men and women in the study were to develop the disease over a nine-year period. Even if a person is not obese, but has a bit of a gut, he or she still has an increased risk of diabetes. Having a waist circumference greater than 35 inches in women, and greater than 40 inches in men, is considered enough to increase risks of a variety of health conditions. But the researchers also found that there was an additive effect: Having both a higher BMI and a larger waist size increased the risk even more.
Fat in the belly has been linked to a variety of metabolic problems such as poor cholesterol, increased heart-disease risk, insulin resistance and diabetes. Of course, taking a waist circumference measurement doesn't really measure the amount of fat in the belly. A 2010 study in the Journal of Clinical Endocriniology & Metabolism aimed to get beyond waist size and actually measure abdominal fat.
For five years, researchers followed more than 30,000 non-diabetic women who were 40 years or older. The women were given body composition scans by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA). These scans are typically used to measure bone density, although they also assess the amount of body fat present in the trunk and limbs of the body. Results showed that women with more fat in the abdominal area had increased risks of developing diabetes. Those with the greatest proportion of ab fat had a 3.6 times greater risk of getting diabetes than the women with the least amount. This study did not distinguish between the type of fat found in the belly, whether it was comprised of mostly below-the-surface belly fat (the kind that jiggles) or deep visceral fat (fat packed around the organs). The deeper visceral fat has been found to be the more unhealthy kind.
So, if you do have a spare tire (or two), what should you do to decrease your risks of getting diabetes? First, know that even if diabetes runs in your family, you're not doomed to get it.
Now it's time to take action and do something about that jelly belly. What you don't want to do is plop on the floor and do a zillion crunches, situps or other core-strengthening moves. Not only can some of those exercises overstress your back, they do nothing to reduce fat around your middle. You can also resist the urge to splurge on an infomercial get-a-flat-belly-fast product.
What you should do is more cardio, or aerobic exercise, such as walking, running, dancing (Zumba counts) and cycling. In addition to moving your whole body more and eating more healthfully, you should also sit less. New research suggests that the more you sit — even if you exercise — the greater your risk of a variety of health conditions including diabetes.
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