Where is visceral fat located

Low carb diets , such as the keto diet , may also help you lose visceral fat. Discover other ways to reduce visceral fat.

The stress hormone cortisol can actually increase how much visceral fat your body stores, so reducing the stress in your life will help make it easier to lose the fat. Practice meditation , deep breathing , and other stress management tactics. Your doctor can use tests such as blood tests or an electrocardiogram ECG or EKG to check for health risks associated with high incidence of visceral fat.

They may also refer you to a nutritionist. That makes it that much more dangerous. Maintaining a healthy, active, low-stress lifestyle can help prevent visceral fat from building up in excess in the abdominal cavity.

Visceral fat, or belly fat, is extremely bad for your health and linked to chronic disease. Here are strategies to lose visceral fat and improve your…. Excess belly fat is very unhealthy. It can drive diseases like heart disease and type 2 diabetes.

Here are 11 things that can make you gain belly fat. Focusing on body fat percentage instead of weight is much more useful to track fat loss progress. Here are the 10 best ways to measure your body fat…. There are several different types of fat in our bodies. The main types of fat cells are white, brown, and beige cells, and they all play different…. There are many natural weight loss methods that science has shown to be effective.

Here are 29 easy ways to lose weight naturally. Getting good quality sleep is an important part of weight loss.

Some doctors may carry out some blood and other tests, or refer individuals to a nutritionist or dietitian. Visceral fat is fat that we cannot see, so it is not always easy to know whether a person has an excess of it. Because the associated health risks can be severe, it is essential for those who suspect their visceral fat levels are high to seek advice from a health professional. Usually, it is possible to avoid high levels of visceral fat by leading a healthy and active lifestyle.

Those who do store dangerous amounts of visceral fat can reduce their levels by making positive changes to their lifestyle. Changes include eating a nutritious, low-fat diet, increasing the amount of exercise, and lowering stress levels. Water loss during sleep can lead to people weighing less in the morning, while their bodies have also burned calories overnight.

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The review examines both animal and human studies. This article explores the Galveston Diet, how it works, what to eat and avoid, the research behind it, and its benefits and drawbacks. What is the best way to get rid of visceral fat?

Medically reviewed by Daniel Bubnis, M. How is visceral fat rated? In women, a waist circumference of 35 inches or larger is generally considered a sign of excess visceral fat, but that may not apply if your overall body size is large.

Rather than focus on a single reading or absolute cut-off, keep an eye on whether your waist is growing are your pants getting snug at the waist? That should give you a good idea of whether you're gaining unhealthy visceral fat. Visceral fat can be measured in a variety of ways. CT scans and full-body MRIs are the most precise, but they are expensive and rarely available, so investigators often use estimates based on waist circumference or waist size in proportion to height see "Gut check".

To ensure that they're not just measuring overall obesity, researchers also check whether a person's waist circumference is higher than average for her or his body mass index BMI. Cardiovascular disease. Several studies have documented this effect. For example, a large study of European women ages 45 to 79 concluded that those with the biggest waists and those with the largest waists in relation to their hip size had more than double the risk of developing heart disease.

The risk was still nearly double even after adjustment for several other risk factors, including blood pressure, cholesterol, smoking, and BMI. Higher visceral-fat volume also has a deleterious impact on several other heart disease risk factors. It's associated with higher blood pressure, blood sugar levels and triglyceride levels, and lower levels of HDL good cholesterol.

Taken together, these changes, known as metabolic syndrome, create a serious risk for cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. Researchers at Kaiser Permanente found that people in their early 40s with the highest levels of abdominal fat, compared with those who had the least abdominal fat at that age, were nearly three times more likely to develop dementia including Alzheimer's disease by their mids to early 80s.

Dementia was not associated with increased thigh size. The risks were highest for women who were both large-waisted and overweight or obese. The investigators believe that belly fat raises the risk of asthma more than other poundage because it has inflammatory effects throughout the body, including in the airways.

Breast cancer. A combined analysis of several studies found that premenopausal women with abdominal obesity the largest waist size in proportion to their height were at greater risk for breast cancer.

Large waists were also linked to breast cancer risk among postmenopausal women, but that effect was not significant once BMI was taken into account.

Colorectal cancer. People with the most visceral fat have three times the risk of developing colorectal adenomas precancerous polyps than those with the least visceral fat. The relationship was found after many other risks were accounted for.

The researchers also confirmed that adenomatous polyps in the colon are associated with insulin resistance, which may be the mechanism that increases the cancer risk.

Where you tend to gain fat depends on your genes, your hormones, your age, your birth weight smaller babies more readily add belly fat later in life , and whether you've had children women who have given birth tend to develop more visceral fat than women who haven't.

As young adults, women on average have less visceral fat than men, but that changes with menopause. You can't change your birth weight or your genes, and you can't hold off menopause. But there are several ways you can minimize the accumulation of visceral fat. The good news is that because it's more readily metabolized into fatty acids, it responds more efficiently to diet and exercise than fat on the hips and thighs. Here are some approaches that may help:. Keep moving. Exercise can help reduce your waist circumference.

Even if you don't lose weight, you lose visceral belly fat and gain muscle mass. Engage in at least 30 minutes of moderate-intensity activity most days, such as brisk walking or bicycling at a casual pace. Also create opportunities to add motion to routine tasks. For example, park farther from your destination and walk the rest of the way, take the stairs instead of the elevator, and stand while you talk on the phone.

Studies have shown that you can help trim visceral fat or prevent its growth with both aerobic activity such as brisk walking and strength training exercising with weights.

Spot exercises, such as sit-ups, can tighten abdominal muscles but won't get at visceral fat.