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A recent study claims that your waistline could be a much more clear indicator of the heart disease risks you are prone to, as opposed to the well-known BMI. The study was conducted by the Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute of Salt Lake City, and the results were presented last Saturday during a cardiology conference in Chicago.

Obesity has always been a problem in the United States, and the numbers only seem to be growing. With the rise of obese people so do heart and cardiovascular diseases. It has been widely known that the body mass index (BMI) is like a compass in detecting health issues, especially those related to the heart. However, others have been claiming that the index is not relevant.

In the light of the recent discovery that there are more overweight than underweight people in the world, a new study points out that risks of heart disease are actually determined by the circumference of our waists. The results show that the larger the waistline, the more prone people are to developing cardiovascular diseases.

It appears that those who have apple-shaped bodies have higher chances of developing heart diseases than those with a pear-shaped body because the abdominal fat does more harm than the one found on your hips. The study involved diabetes patients that did not exhibit heart disease symptoms and concluded that people with larger waistlines have worse ventricular functions than the thinner ones.

Dr. Brent Muhlestein, author of the study, has stated that abdominal obesity is the most harmful one since it favors the build-up of plaque in the arteries, much more than fat that is deposited elsewhere. Any modification to the ventricular function leads to heart disease since the left ventricle is known to be the primary pumping chamber of the body.

However, abdominal health does influence much more because of its diverse inflammatory substances, according to cardiologist Dr. Sarah Samaan from Texas. A large waistline also leads to high blood pressure, diabetes and a stiff heart which in turn determines heart failure.

In more details, the study points out that the recommended size for women is less than 34 inches while the one for men should be below forty inches. The risks usually start showing up in those with a waistline larger than 45 inches. In order to avoid this outcome, people are advised to lead a healthy lifestyle, including an appropriate diet and exercise.

The findings are still in a preliminary phase since they have yet to be published in a medical journal reviewed by peers. However, previous studies seem to point in the same direction.

Image Source: Natural Breast Enlargement Journal

The body mass index (BMI) of a person may be a flawed measurement of one’s risk of diabetes or heart disease, a new study suggests.

Based on the results, about 75 million people in the United States have a risk of diabetes or heart disease that is either higher or lower than their BMIs suggested it should be, the researchers found.

Jeffrey M. Hunger, co-author of the study and a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Santa Barbara, said that to stay healthy, people should focus on staying active, eating healthy foods, and getting enough sleep, rather than on their weight.

For the new study – published Thursday (Feb. 4) in the International Journal of Obesity – the researchers looked at data on the body mass index (BMI), blood pressure, cholesterol levels, blood sugar levels, insulin, and inflammation levels of about 40,000 adults in the United States.

Researchers stated that people are cardiometabolically healthy – which is the risk for diabetes and heart disease – when they have healthy values on at least four on the aforementioned indicators.

The results showed that about sixteen percent of very obese people, about twenty-nine percent of individuals with a body mass index in the obese range, and almost fifty percent of the people with a BMI in the overweight range were actually cardiometabolically healthy, according to the researchers.

Janet Tomiyama, lead author of the study and an assistant professor of psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles, said that the new data proves that there are a lot of people who are either overweight or obese and are perfectly healthy.

On the other end of the spectrum, the researchers found that more than thirty percent of the people, whose body mass indexes were in the normal weight range, were in fact cardiometabolically unhealthy.

A 2010 study, published in the International Journal of Obesity, also found that a person’s body mass index was not an accurate measurement of health. For instance, waist size was a better predicator of children’s risk of heart disease, rather than their body mass index.

In 2014, a study published in the journal Pediatric Obesity, found that twenty-five percent of children who were labelled as obese based on their body fat content, were not considered obese based on their body mass index.

Waistline Can Predict Risks of Heart Disease

BMI Not an Accurate Indicator of Health

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