Abdominal fat: the worst kind for your health

Before the dawn of the 20th century, a lean frame suggested that someone was sickly, hungry, and poor. Even in life insurance circles, fat was seen as a cushion against disease. But now we know that fat is anything but protection from disease. Here's the skinny on abdominal fat and how you can combat it.

These days we're living in a dangerous time. It's an era of huge portions of french fries, tubs of popcorn, iced Danish pastries and sugary drinks, with desk-bound days, and couch-boundnights in front of the television or surfing the Internet.

Excess body fat is now the norm: 43 percent of men and 34 percent of women are overweight. Another 22 percent of men and 23 percent of women — that's almost one in four of us — are clinically obese. Surveys show that the rates in Canada for obese and overweight people are amongst the highest in the world.

In fact, being overweight is the most common nutrition-related health problem in North America. Roughly 60 percent of all adults are overweight. Of those 60 percent, more than 20 percent are obese and thus at increased risk for an early death. And it doesn't end with the adults. More than 25 percent of all Canadian children and adolescents are considered overweight or obese — a trend that continues to grow.

How can love handles and a pot-belly be so deadly?

A growing mountain of research reveals that killer fat is abdominal (or central) fat — the stuff packed around, and sometimes in, your internal organs. While hip, thigh and bottom fat are relatively benign, stomach fat increases your odds for high blood pressure, blood clots and high cholesterol.

Abdominal fat also starts a chain of biochemical events that leads to insulin resistance — a precursor of Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke, breast and prostate cancer, and kidney failure.

The reason stomach fat is so dangerous is that, far from being held in reserve until your body needs extra energy, it is continually released into your bloodstream in the form of artery-clogging fatty acids that your liver converts into harmful LDL cholesterol.

Abdominal fat also releases other compounds — among them, appetite-regulating hormones and immune system chemicals — that open the door for three huge heart risks: atherosclerosis, metabolic syndrome and inflammation. Even if they're slim elsewhere, so-called "apples" — men and women who carry a large amount of abdominal fat — often have almost identical waist and hip measurements. "Pears," on the other hand, carry weight on their hips and thighs and have a distinct difference between waist and hip measurements, which is a much healthier shape.

If you think you may have a risky waistline, wrap a tape measure snugly around the narrowest part of your naked waist. Generally, men with waists over 100 centimetres (40 inches) and women with waists over 90 centimetres (35 inches) are at higher risk.

So how can you get rid of this fat? Don't rest your hopes on surgeons simply being able to remove it in years to come.

There are other, much healthier ways to begin trimming this dangerous stuff.

• Eat less saturated fat and virtually no trans fats. Diets high in saturated fats — such as butter, fatty meats, ice cream and whole milk — make you pile on the central fat, as do trans fats, the fats that give many packaged cookies and snack foods their crunch.
• Increase your fibre intake — proven to whittle abdominal fat.
• Relax and enjoy life more, because stress and high levels of the stress hormone cortisol are closely linked with central fat storage.
• Get more physically active and start feeling better as a result.

Bear all this information in mind when you're about to reach for a sugary drink or order a large fries to help you make healthier choices and to combat abdominal fat.