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What’s Your Waist-to-Hip Ratio? Here’s Why It Matters
What’s your waist-to-hip ratio? It matters more than you think. Knowing this value is more than an aesthetic issue: it’s an important marker of health risk. In fact, your waist-to-hip ratio says something about your risk of developing chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
Why This Ratio Matters
You have two types of fat: subcutaneous and visceral. Subcutaneous is the superficial kind you can pinch between your fingers while visceral fat is deep belly fat that builds up inside your pelvic cavity and wraps around organs such as your liver. The latter type is the most dangerous from a health standpoint and you can only see via an imaging study such as a CT scan.
Why should you be afraid of visceral fat? Research shows that carrying higher amounts of this deep abdominal fat boosts the risk of insulin resistance and other hormonal abnormalities that increase the risk of various chronic diseases, including cardiovascular diseae. If you pop that tape measure around your waist and hips and discover your ratio is bad, let it be motivation to modify your lifestyle and trim that waistline down!
Visceral fat also produces inflammatory chemicals called cytokines that can damage other tissues. In fact, research shows the overproduction of cytokines and…
