Having a pot belly has long been established as a warning signal that your diet and lifestyle can endanger your health. Even with other slender people it is known that an accumulation of fat around the abdomen is harmful.
This is because a pauch can indicate high levels of visceral fat – or deep layers of fatty tissue around vital organs such as the liver and even the heart.
Visceral fat consists of cells that separate chemicals and hormones that are toxic to the body, causing widespread inflammation, which in turn increases the risk of heart conditions, stroke and type 2 diabetes. But now scientists discover that this kind of belly fat can influence our health wider, from hearing and eyesight, to mental well -being and whether we can taste food well.
In the last finding, scientists discovered that adults with excess belly fat are much more at risk of depression.
When researchers from the Xianangya School of Medicine followed 7,258 men and middle-aged women, people with the highest body roundness index (a size for waist circumference compared to height) had almost 40 percent more likely to have depression than with the lowest.
The scientists said this could be because fat cells stimulate the production of free radicals that are known to reduce the levels of the chemical serotonin of the feel-good brain (they oxidize serotonin, comparable to how steel steel is).
In a report on their findings, recently published in the Journal Plos One, they said: “This suggests that Body Roundness Index could serve as a simple and easily accessible indicator for predicting depression risk.”
It is not just a mood that is influenced by the waist. It can influence your memory and the risk of dementia, according to a 2023 study in the magazine aging and the disease.
Researchers from Washington University analyzed data from 10,000 healthy adults aged 20 to 80, who underwent MRI scans to measure the volume of their brains, and discovered that in people with the most abdominal fat, the brains of the brain associated with memory, concentration, planning and decision-making were smaller.
Although the researchers said that they could not be sure that belly fat causes these brain changes, earlier studies have shown that the levels of inflammatory chemicals, cytokines, in brain tissue increase, which can cause permanent damage.
Scientists discover that this kind of belly fat can influence our health wider, from hearing and eyesight, to mental well -being and whether we can taste food well
Researchers in China discovered that people with the highest Body Roundness index were almost 40 percent more likely to have depression than with the lowest
“People with obesity often appear to have smaller brain volumes,” explains Alex Miras, a professor in endocrinology at Ulster University.
‘They have elements of cognitive dysfunction that is known to improve when they lose weight.
‘Visceral fat is a toxic fat mass that causes generalized inflammation [all over the body].
‘It can be everywhere – for example, if you have fat around the heart, you get an inflammation that leads to narrowing of the arteries [which can increase the risk of a heart attack].
‘And in the brain this inflammation is in the brain tissue itself, where the memory and executive function affects [the ability to focus, remember instructions and juggle several tasks at once]. ‘
How much visceral fat you have is partially genetic, but it starts to occur when the calorie -intake consistently outweighs the burnt calories.
Other studies show that potbows can increase the risk of age -related macular degeneration (AMD), an important cause of blindness that affects an estimated 700,000 people in the UK.
The situation usually develops after the age of 50. The most common form, dry AMD, accounts for 90 percent of the cases and develops when light -sensitive cells in the macula (the central part of the retina) break down and not renewed. Inflammation in dry AMD has been associated with aging, genetics, smoking and exposure to sunlight.
When researchers in Austria compared people with AMD with a group without vision problems, they discovered that the AMD patients had large deposits of visceral fat in their stomachs much more often, the magazine Acta Ophthalmologica reported in 2015.
Blood tests showed that AMD patients also had significantly higher levels of inflammatory chemicals – excreted by fat cells.
In the meantime, scientists from the University of Valencia in Spain have found that wearing extra kilos around the waist can influence your sense of taste and odor. This is due to the fact that adipokines, chemicals that pump Visceraal fat, can change the perception of specific scents and flavors.
The team followed 179 women, ranging from very slim to obese, and measured their levels of visceral fat before they gave odor and taste tests. The results, published in Plos One in 2017, showed that those with the highest part of the belly fat found it the most difficult to identify common scents and tastes.
Even your hearing can be in danger: at least three studies have shown that adults with the largest fat deposits at the waist have a worse hearing.
A theory is that inflammation caused by chemicals stored in fat, reducing the small blood vessels in the ear, robs the inner ear of the oxygen it needs to stay healthy.
But visceral fat may not be completely bad. A 2020 study by the University of Edinburgh discovered that it also contains vital immune system cells that can combat dangerous insects, such as those that cause peritonitis, an infection of the abdominal wall that is an important cause of sepsis.
The researchers emphasized that these cells naturally occur in the fat wall of tissue that we all have (even with flat tummies), called the omentum, that helps to protect our internal organs.
So how can you see if your health runs the risk due to belly fat? “The easiest way is to compare your waist circumference with your height,” says Professor Miras. “If your waist is less than half of your height, it should be fine.”
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