# Visceral Fat



## MAC_Whore (May 26, 2007)

An interesting article found in MSN.com's Health & Fitness today: 

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*Vanquishing Visceral Fat*
By Scott McCredie for MSN Health & Fitness
Freelance


Want to know what kind of shape your body is in? Just look at the actual shape of your body. Do you tend to carry fat around your stomach (an “apple” shape), or around your hips, buttocks and thighs (a “pear”)? 

A growing number of scientists and physicians say your body shape—and the amount of fat you carry—is a critical marker with important implications for the likelihood of developing a host of diseases, such as diabetes, hypertension and osteoporosis.

“Body shape is the closest thing we have to a medical crystal ball,” writes Dr. Marie Savard in Apples and Pears: the Body Shape Solution for Weight Loss and Wellness, a 2005 book that examines the link between women’s body shapes and disease. 

Savard formed this view after examining a decade of research that revealed a strong relationship between body shape, body fat and health risks. It turns out that where your body packs on excess fat is an indicator of the type of fat you have—and your future health. (A simple measurement gives you a good ballpark idea of where you stand: Place a measuring tape just above your hip bones. Men should take action if their circumference is over 40 inches; women, over 35 inches).

Most men and post-menopausal women tend to build up fat in the abdominal region, the classic apple shape. Some of this fat resides just under the skin and is called subcutaneous fat. But much of it lies between and around the organs in the abdominal cavity—the liver, kidneys, pancreas and intestines—and is called visceral fat. Visceral fat is all but invisible to the eye, and can only be monitored accurately with an MRI scan. 

Subcutaneous fat, though unsightly, is relatively benign. And so is a moderate amount of visceral fat, which protects the organs it surrounds by absorbing shock and insulating against temperature extremes. 

But for reasons scientists don’t yet understand, excess visceral fat often causes a cascade of health risks. It is thought to be more “metabolically active” than subcutaneous fat, releasing a variety of enzymes and hormones into the bloodstream, most of which are harmful. 

Fat Isn't Passive

So if you thought fat just sat there soaking up excess calories from your diet, you were wrong. Think of fat as another organ in the body, one that plays a role—and mostly a negative one in the case of visceral fat—in governing particular body processes.

One such process is the amount of blood sugar (glucose) the body is able to use. Briefly, the system works like this: Insulin is the chemical produced by the pancreas that allows energy-giving glucose to enter muscle and fat cells. Somehow, the presence of excessive visceral fat triggers the liver into producing an overload of fatty acids (the building blocks of fat) that causes cells to become resistant to insulin. The result is that not enough glucose can reach cells, some of which weaken or die. Metabolic Syndrome or Type II diabetes, depending on the exact nature of the process, are the official names given to insulin resistance. Once cells have become insulin resistant, the table is set for hypertension (high blood pressure), heart disease and stroke. In women, excess visceral fat is also associated with a higher risk of breast cancer. 

That’s the bad news.

The good news is that visceral fat can be vanquished through vigorous exercise. A Duke University study published in 2003 demonstrated that those who exercised at a level equivalent to 17 miles of jogging a week reduced their visceral fat 8.6 percent after eight months. Those who exercised less frequently or at a lesser intensity did not lose or gain any visceral fat. 

The take-home messages: Daily vigorous exercise will reduce your visceral fat and thus your health risks; moderate exercise will keep you at current levels; and no exercise increases your visceral fat by about 1 percent per month.

Another study, from Johns Hopkins University, looked at body shape and diet. Researchers found a correlation between fat intake and the presence of visceral fat. Those who consumed more than 30 percent of their daily intake of calories from fat were most likely to have visceral fat.

So even though your body shape may seem set in stone, eating less and exercising more can help prevent (and even shed) visceral fat—and with it a host of diseases.


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## mskitchmas (May 26, 2007)

Thanks for this!  Another great resource to check into is the book _You on a Diet._


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## purplkaret (May 27, 2007)

yeah visceral fat, or abdominal fat, is really unhealthy pretty much b/c rather than being outside of ur abdominal cavity, it's inside so it's pretty much bumping up against your heart, liver, n all of those organs.


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