Visceral Fat – Facts at a Glance

/ July 28, 2012 / Comments Off on Visceral Fat – Facts at a Glance / Belly

What is it?

Visceral fat – one type of bellyfat – is truly evil according to Philipp Scherer – in the Discovery Magazine. He is a professor of cell biology and medicine at Albert Einstein and an expert on fat.

Key facts:

  • It is located next to your organs near your portal vein (which carries blood from intestine to liver).
  • It is located inside abdominal cavity – packed around your organs.
  • Most of your belly fat is visceral-fat.
  • It produces free fatty acids which enter the portal vein, go to the liver and produce blood lipids.
  • It is directly linked with higher total cholesterol and LDL (bad) cholesterol, lower HDL (good) cholesterol, and insulin resistance.
  • These free fatty acids cause reduced sensitivity to insulin, the hormone that helps glucose enter the body’s cells.
  • Visceral fat produces hormones and other substances that can raise blood pressure, negatively alter good and bad cholesterol levels and impair the body’s ability to use insulin (insulin resistance).
  • Belly fat is linked to cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, insulin resistance and inflammatory diseases.
  • This bad fat is also implicated in the development of Alzheimer’s disease, colon cancer, gallstones, ovarian cystic disease, breast cancer, and sleep apnea.
  • Visceral fat is a risk factor in nighttime heart attacks.
  • Men have more than women. Compared with women, men typically have a smaller butt-thigh fat bucket and twice as much visceral fat (also known as a beer belly!)
  • It’s genetically different than subcutaneous fat – per Matthais Blüher of the University of Leipzig.
  • Rachel Whitmer at the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research in Oakland, California found linke between it and dementia – Subjects who had a healthy weight at midlife but were, nevertheless, in the top 20 percent of the study population in central obesity (the amount of fat around the middle) were 65 percent more likely to develop dementia than those in the bottom 20 percent.

Sources

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