A new study has found that belly fat puts women at a higher risk than men for diabetes. The study — which was published in Nature Medicine on Monday (September 9th), found that just an extra kilogram of visceral fat can raise a woman’s risk for type 2 diabetes by more than seven times. The same fat accumulation gives men twice the risk for type 2 diabetes. Deep belly fat also causes more heart attacks, high blood pressure and hyperlipidemia. In all, they found more than 200 distinct genes influence belly fat, many of which were tied to how much or how little a person eats or exercises. This discovery hints at those genes making a substantial contribution to abdominal obesity. The researchers examined data on visceral fat in 325,000 people who participated in the UK Biobank cohort, in addition to looking at genes that affect fat that gathers in the belly. The researchers also observed people with small or medium amounts of deep belly fat have the biggest jump in cardiovascular risk and diabetes compared to those who already have a lot of abdominal fat.
Belly fat is not just a problem because it can look bad.
In fact, having lots of fat in the abdominal area is strongly linked to diseases like type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
For this reason, losing belly fat has massive benefits for your health and can help you live longer. pic.twitter.com/JDVvkRQW5h
— BookDoc (@BookDoc) September 3, 2019
