Big Waist - Big Health Risk

[steaner]

The apple figure poses greater health risks, reports a new study at the German Institution of Human Nutrition. According to the study, overweight people tend to have higher risk of dying than someone of normal weight. Moreover, if you have an apple shaped body, the risks are even higher. People who tend to accumulate weight around their waist are more susceptible to death risks than those who accumulate fat around their hips and thighs.
“We found that a large waist circumference is related to a higher risk of death even for individuals who have the same BMI [body mass index, a ratio of weight to height],” said the study’s lead author, Dr. Tobias Pischon, of the German Institute of Human Nutrition. “Therefore, you could say that adipose [fat] accumulation in the abdominal region is even more detrimental than just having an elevated BMI level,” he added.
Earlier researches had proved that high fat accumulation results in chronic diseases. However, there were no reports that distinguished or compared death risks between people who were overweight and those who were overweight with more abdominal fat.
The new research has been published in the November 13 issue of New England Journal of Medicine which included nearly 360,000 people from 9 European countries that were a part of the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC). The study revealed that waist size was a powerful indicator of risks associated with chronic diseases or even death. Extra 2 inches raised a chance of early death by 13 to 17 percent.
People usually measure their Body Mass Index (BMI) to assess their health risk. However, if the waist size is larger for a person with a normal BMI, then he also tends to by susceptible to early health risks.