Having a “beer belly” is more likely to lead to heart damage than having fat in any other location on the body, especially in men.
That’s according to a study that found abdominal obesity, or tummy fat, is associated with more harmful changes in heart structure than overall body weight alone.
The findings, being presented this week at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA), explained that tummy fat can cause the heart to pump less blood, leading to heart failure.
Study author Jennifer Erley, radiology resident at University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf in Germany, said: “It appears to lead to a potentially pathological form of cardiac remodelling, concentric hypertrophy, where the heart muscle thickens but the overall size of the heart doesn’t increase, leading to smaller cardiac volumes.
“In fact, the inner chambers become smaller, so the heart holds and pumps less blood. This pattern impairs the heart’s ability to relax properly, which eventually can lead to heart failure.”
Researchers used data from an ongoing long-term population study in Germany and studied cardiovascular MRI images of 2,244 adults aged 46 to 78, who did not have cardiovascular disease.
They took into account the participants’ BMI, a measure of general obesity calculated from a person’s weight and height, and waist-to-hip ratio (WHR), a measure of waist circumference to calculate abdominal obesity.
According to BMI, 69 per cent of males and 56 per cent of females in the study were overweight or obese. Using WHR, 91 per cent of the males and 64 per cent of females met the World Health Organization (WHO) criteria for obesity.
They found BMI was more often linked to enlarged heart chambers and abdominal obesity was associated with thickening of the heart muscle and smaller heart chamber volumes.
However, study authors found changes to the heart structure were more prominent in men, even after accounting for risk factors, including arterial hypertension, smoking, diabetes and cholesterol.
Excess weight, especially around the waist, is known to lead to fatty material building up in the arteries and major organs, increasing the risk of high blood pressure, high cholesterol and type 2 diabetes.
If the arteries that carry blood to your heart get damaged and clogged, it can lead to a heart attack. If this happens in the arteries that carry blood to your brain, it can lead to a stroke or vascular dementia, the British Heart Foundation explains.
But men are more likely to store fat in just their abdomen than women, putting them at a greater risk.
Naveed Sattar, professor of Metabolic Medicine at the University of Glasgow, told The Independent: “Men put their fat in their tummies faster than women, that means men have a higher risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease and heart failure than women.
“Women have a better capacity to store fat in their skin, arms, legs, and fat there is locked up. Whereas when you start putting fat in the tummy you are also putting fat into organs where it shouldn’t be, such as the liver, muscle, pancreas and the heart. Therefore men’s buffering capacity for weight is not as good as women.”
Instead of focusing on reducing overall weight, middle-aged adults should focus on preventing the accumulation of fat in the abdominal area through regular exercise, a balanced diet and medical intervention if necessary, Dr Erley concluded.
