Viseral fat: what it is, why it’s worse than subcutaneous fat, how to get rid of it and what are the health risks if you don’t.
By Dona Suri
Health care expenditure rises steeply every year … and this is even after the rate of increase is adjusted for inflation and a demographic in which about 17 percent of the population is aged 65 or older.
Looking at the whole system (hospitals, doctors, therapeutics) in 2021, the cost of treating cardio-vascular diseases and stroke came to $216 billion. In the same year, the cost of treating diabetes stood at $327 billion. $180.7 billion was forked out to treat musclo-skeletal disorders (includes joint replacement surgeries and treatment of back and neck pain). The cost of treating arthritis came to nearly $140 billion.
This is the economic data. What about health care from the angle of YOU?
A hospital is not a holiday destination. Normal people don’t want to be sick. The way to stay healthy – which means less spending on health care – is simplicity itself:
Maintain Your Correct Weight.
Picture a girl… a bit chubby. Her kind of fat is just under the skin. Doctors don’t worry about it.
Now picture a guy with a spare tire. His kind of fat is deep in the abdomen, surrounding the liver, kidneys, pancreas and intestines. Of course, he can have subcutaneous fat too, but doctors worry about visceral fat. Visceral fat undermines our health, subcutaneous fat doesn’t.
Be body positive as much as you like, but visceral fat is really and truly BAD fat. It should never account for more than 10 percent of total body fat. The more of it you have, the greater your risk for …
Type 2 diabetes,
Cardiovascular disease and stroke.
Some types of cancer (prostate, breast, liver, kidney, colon, ovarian, and endometrial),
Orthopedic problems,
Alzheimer’s
Estimating the amount of visceral fat that you are carrying around is as easy as measuring your waistline. Take a piece of string that is exactly as long as you are tall. Fold the string in half. If that half-string goes all the way round your waist at belly button level, you are not carrying excess visceral fat. If the string doesn’t go all the way around, then the size of the gap indicates how much visceral fat you are carrying.
Another indicator is your waist-to-hip ratio. Measure your waist size and your hip size (widest part of your hips). Divide your waist size by your hip size. A waist-to-hip ratio higher than 0.85 in women and 0.90 in men indicates visceral fat.
Learning that they have visceral fat rarely comes as a big surprise to people. They know in their hearts that they didn’t get it by shunning potato chips and walking five miles every day.
Excuse: “My fat-prone genes.”
Sad fact of life: some people keep fat off easily, some don’t. Genes are no reason to be careless, especially if carelessness deprives us of a long and healthy life.
Excuse: “It’s all muscle.”
HA!
Another word for fat is adipose tissue; when this tissue accumulates inside the abdominal muscle wall, it acts like an endocrine organ. You have a whole system of endrocrine organs and you need every single one of them; they all pump hormones into the blood stream. Hormones are chemical messengers carrying information and instructions from one set of cells to another. They influence every cell in our body. Viscera means the large internal organs, such as the heart, lungs and stomach. With just enough visceral fat, you have an energy storehouse, pumping out some hormones and inhibiting production of others. Fat lying around the viscera is ideally located to do mischief: liver on one side, pancreas on the other, intestines curling all around. More fat equals more potential for trouble.
A healthy digestion works like this:
Your liver makes glucose, stores it and releases it according to the body’s need. This liver process happens “under orders” from two hormones, insulin and glucagon.
The pancreas makes and releases insulin when it detects blood glucose level rising above the correct level. Not enough insulin: blood sugar level rises and you have hyperglycemia.
The pancreas also makes and releases glucagon. Not enough glucagon: blood sugar falls; you have hypoglycemia. Hypoglycemia can come on suddenly; if untreated it results in coma and death. In order to be stored in the body, glucose has to be converted into glycogen. Insulin does that. Without insulin, glucose stays in the bloodstream, keeping the blood sugar level high.
When you are overweight (or drink too much alcohol), fatty acids escape from the adipose tissues into the blood and are carried to the pancreas and liver. Fat accumulates, causing pancreas and liver to becomes inflamed and stringy and interfering with their functioning. Diabetes is the name for a faulty glucose production/uptake system: the pancreas makes insulin but the liver and other cells of the body don’t respond to it.
When pancreas and liver go on the blink, it’s not long before your cholesterol shoots up and plaque starts choking your arteries. You’ve got cardio-vascular problems which means risk of heart attack and stroke.
An important product of adipose cells is adiponectin. If you have a healthy amount of visceral fat, it produces enough adiponectin to prevent adipose tissues from storing fat that you don’t need. The more visceral fat you have, the less adiponectin it produces, so fat accumulates.
Visceral fat plays a role in the immune system. You have an infected cut or your muscles are sore because you over-exerted at the gym. In response, your immune system first sends pro-inflammatory cells that make the affected area swollen, red and painful. Next, it sends anti-inflammatory cells (prostaglandins) that repair the wound.
This is normal, acute, temporary inflammation.
In chronic inflammation, the body continuously sends out inflammatory cells even when there is no infection or strain.
This faulty response is traced to visceral fat. It deals with excess of macronutrients by releasing interleukin (part of your immune system) and this prompts a pro-inflammatory state and oxidative stress. In chronic inflammation, nothing is repaired and the inflammation never goes away.
A fatty liver is inflamed all the time. Inflammation partly explains why insulin resistance develops. Chronic
inflammation torpedoes your whole metabolism – not just your organs but even bones and muscles. It
impedes cognitive function and spoils your mood.
What is aging? Doctors say it is nothing but chronic, low-grade inflammation.
Leptin is another product of visceral fat. It is a hormone that regulates appetite and fat storage. During a
fasting period or weight loss, leptin level falls; when the body is well-fed, leptin level rises. If you feel
hungry when your body needs energy, and satisfied when the body has enough, thank your leptin.
Logically, more fat cells should equal more leptin and hunger should shut down. Instead, excess fat leads
to leptin resistance. Leptin signaling is interrupted, and then, no matter how much leptin is produced, the
message does not get through to the brain. Instead, the malfunctioning endocrine systems interprets the
flood of leptin as a sign that you are starving. The body reacts by craving food, food, food – sugary, fatty,
carb-rich food. Overeating leads to leptin resistance, then leptin resistance triggers overeating.
This condition does not show up overnight, and usually it’s found along with three other problems: too much
of the wrong foods, too little sleep, and too much stress.
Here’s another angle on stress. If you hear “stress” and think “cortisol”, you are making the right connection. When you are stressed, your pituitary gland (in the brain, just behind the bridge of your nose) springs into action and signals your two adrenal glands (one sits on top of each of your kidneys). In response, they secrete cortisol. Cortisol flows into the bloodstream and your body goes into “fight-or-flight” mode.
Cortisol commands the liver, to release plenty of glucose into the bloodstream, it enhances the brain’s use of glucose, and increases the availability of substances to repair tissues. Cortisol has its place, but too much of it for too long is harmful. Prolonged stress (meaning excess of cortisol) gets the liver into the habit of over-producing glucose. Where does the extra glucose go? It gets stored in your visceral fat.
Everything is connected to everything else.
In recent years, medical researchers have figured out a great deal about the body’s bio-chemical components and processes, how they interact with each other, and what happens with the process goes haywire.
New things are being discovered every day and it seems like every day there is one more accusing finger pointing at excess visceral fat. For sure, excess visceral fat is both a cause and an effect of a busted system. When you get rid of the spare tire, you get rid of – or at least reduce – many related health problems. And you look good.
Visceral fat melts off quicker than subcutaneous fat and you lose it in the same way. You must have read
basic instructions for shedding the avoirdupois on many occasions but a reminder never comes amiss:
EAT HEALTHY: Lean proteins, whole grains, low-fat dairy, fruits and vegetables. Drastically cut down on carbs and say goodbye to trans fats, refined sugars, extra salt and processed foods.
EAT LESS: Generally, the recommended daily calorie intake is 2,000 calories a day for women and 2,500 for men. If you can eat 500 fewer calories every day, you should lose about one pound a week. Use a calorie calculator.
EAT AT THE RIGHT TIME: Intermittent fasting is easy and it works. Give yourself a block of 16 food-free hours every day. If you don’t adopt intermittent fasting, the next best strategy is to stop eating three hours before bedtime. When we sleep, the body releases human growth hormone (responsible for muscle growth, metabolic repair, rest and recovery). Eating too close to bedtime means that our digestive system is busy throughout the night and the hormone circulating in our body is not human growth hormone but insulin – the fat storage hormone.
EXERCISE: If you can make time for a workout routine, great! It has been proven that high-intensity interval training (HIIT) burns visceral fat fast. HIIT workouts cycle between bursts of intense effort and quick recovery. Aerobics and exercising with weights also melt off visceral fat. If maintaining a daily workout routine is difficult, then get into the walking habit. It is easily possible to walk one mile in about 20 minutes. One mile out and one mile back gives you a 40-minute walk and melts off about 200 calories. If you also watch your diet, you will lose weight.
SLEEP: Human growth hormone helps to keep weight in check. Give yourself seven to eight hours to benefit from it. This puts a whole new spin on the old saying If You Snooze, You Lose.
DE-STRESS: The more you stress, the fatter you get. Exercise is a guaranteed de-stressor; it prompts your brain to release endorphins (feel-good neurotransmitters). Mood lifts, worries fade. There is no single de-stress recipe. Do whatever relaxes YOU.
Recommended: laughing, dancing, a dose of romance – or meditating if you are too uptight for any of previously mentioned activities.
Not recommended: snacking, over-caffeinating, smoking, boozing, maniac driving.)
There is no quick fix: visceral fat cannot be removed by liposuction. Here is your first step:
Commit To Making The Effort