Body Shape unrelated to Heart Disease

Have you been worried because you are apple-shaped and carry your weight around your midline? Have you felt good because you have a pear-shaped body? Well, recent research has cast doubt on these two theories about the shape of your body and heart disease. One study looked at 220,000 individuals and found that fat collecting around the middle had no increase in heart attacks and

strokes when compared to regular obesity of any type. This means it’s the obesity that makes the most difference in getting heart disease or stroke, regardless of where the fat is located.

These findings contradict the “apple-shaped” person at risk for heart disease at a rate that was felt to be three times more likely to get a heart attack than those with fat in other places. The authors recognize that earlier research has been misleading, leading those with pear shaped bodies to do little to prevent heart disease, when in fact they should have been worried.

Researchers say that this should clear up the issue between obesity and heart disease. Rather than look at the distribution of fat, doctors should pay more attention to the basal metabolic rate or BMI. The BMI is calculated as the weight in kilograms divided by the height squared in meters.

Other research counteracts the above study and indicates that having fat around the middle is worse than what you get with an elevated BMI alone. BMI has been criticized by some as being not as good as getting out the tape measure and measuring the distance around the rate. The most recent test, however, looked at 220,000 individuals in 58 collected studies that evaluated people for over a decade.

About 14,000 individuals from study developed a stroke or heart attack. Obesity was measured by virtue of the BMI, the waist circumference or the hip to waist ratio and the results related to heart attacks was exactly the same. The waist to hip ratio was determined by measuring the distance around the waist and measuring the distance around the hips and dividing those two numbers. If you are apple shaped, you have a higher number when you divide those numbers. If you are pear shaped, you are fatter around the hips and thighs and not so much around the waist.

A consortium of about 200 scientists from seventeen countries around the world did this study. It changes the way we look at a person’s shape as it relates to the risk of heart disease and stroke.