William Atkins
Thursday, 13 November 2008 22:28
Science -
Health
Page 1 of 2
A European study has found that the circumference of one’s waist increases a person’s risk of premature death. In other words, the people with the biggest bellies have the biggest chance of not making it to their next meal.
Belly dancers were not specifically studied by the European researchers, but since they keep their waists toned through vigorous dance (and free of fat), they would seem to have less risk from premature death than people who have a lot of fat around their waist.
What the reserachers did find was that the people with the most belly fat had about twice the risk of dying prematurely than did those with the least amount of fat around their bellies.
Surprisingly, people did not have to be overweight or obese to be at increased risk from early death, but only have large bellies.
Their paper “
General and Abdominal Adiposity and Risk of Death in Europe” is published in the November 12, 2008 issue of
The New England Journal of Medicine.
Adiposity means relating to animal fat.
The study was conducted on 359,387 European adults for 9.7 years. All the participants were in a larger study called the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (
EPIC) project.
Their study was based on earlier research that showed that excess abdominal fat raised the risk for heart disease, strokes, and heart attacks, along with diabetes, some cancers, and age-related memory problems.
Previous research had not showed, however, a connection of increased mortality and excessive abdominal fat.
The results follow on page two.
