Belly Fat. Abdominal Obesity. Whatever you want to call it is uncomfortable, unhealthy and ugly.
If you are like me, just looking at a piece of cake can make your belly expand. Looking at that spare tire around your waist may not look good, but it’s also very dangerous for your health.

• Visceral fat (the layer of fat that is closest to your organs) can increase your chances of developing insulin resistance. This can lead to glucose intolerance.
• Abdominal obesity increases your chances of developing type 2 diabetes, heart disease and cancer.
• Belly fat can also be an indicator of other conditions as well.

Type 2 Diabetes

As previously mentioned, visceral belly fat is a strong predictor to insulin resistance and heart disease.
Insulin resistance is when cells in your body stop responding to the insulin your pancreas sends out as a response to glucose (blood sugar).
Insulin signals to your liver to store extra glucose but when you become insulin resistant, your liver sends the extra glucose to fat cells to be stored as body fat.
Some of that fat ends up stored around your abdomen as belly fat.

Increased belly fat can also be an indicator of increased inflammation in diabetes patients regardless of glycemic control.
This means that a diabetes patient can keep their blood sugar under control and still have systemic inflammation due to abdominal obesity.
That’s why it is so important to keep up an exercise regimen that helps to reduce belly fat.

Heart Disease

According to the American College of Cardiology, “belly fat more than triples risk for heart disease in women” and matters more than weight on the scale. In both women and men, increased belly fat can be linked to repeat heart attacks.

Abdominal obesity is a marker for visceral fat which can cause heart and metabolic problems such as high blood pressure, high glucose, raised blood fats and insulin resistance. This leads to clogging of the arteries as plaque narrows the pathway.

Cancer

Visceral fat can weaken our organs and cause more insulin production.
Too much insulin production can lead to various cancers including colon and pancreatic cancer.
Pancreatic cancer is hard to detect because there are no screenings to catch any early signs of cancer.
The location of the pancreas is deep within the torso behind the stomach and is surrounded by the spleen, liver and small intestine.
Keeping a trim tummy is one way of keeping your chances low for cancers of those organs.

A study has shown that belly fat may increase the chance of prostate cancer in men.
Another study showing that visceral fat, the most inner layer of belly fat, can store a protein that can turn cancerous and cause cancer in both men and women.

Stop Belly Fat!

So what can be done? Obviously, stop eating cake! But seriously?
There are plenty of people who have curbed their sweet tooth, reduced the number of calories and who exercise that still have belly fat. Here at Effectual Health, we are studying why those who are putting in so much effort are coming up short. We are looking into how to reduce visceral fat.

Let’s get started.

First, you’ll need to get your belly measurement. Get out your body tape measure. If you don’t have one, you can purchase one from here:

For women, if your waist measures 35 inches or more there is cause for concern.
For men, if your waist measures 40 inches or more it could spell trouble.

Don’t worry.

[bctt tweet=”Facing the truth is the first step to better health.”]

Next time, we will talk about how drinking water can help to boost your metabolism (good for burning fat), immune system and detox your system naturally.