What is the risk of waist circumference?
Classification of Overweight and Obesity by BMI, Waist Circumference, and Associated Disease Risks
| Disease Risk* Relative to Normal Weight and Waist Circumference | ||
|---|---|---|
| BMI (kg/m2) | Men 102 cm (40 in) or less Women 88 cm (35 in) or less | |
| Underweight | < 18.5 | – |
| Normal | 18.5–24.9 | – |
| Overweight | 25.0–29.9 | Increased |
Why is waist circumference a predictor of disease risk?
Measuring waist circumference helps screen for possible health risks that come with overweight and obesity. If most of your fat is around your waist rather than at your hips, you’re at a higher risk for heart disease and type 2 diabetes.
What does abdominal obesity put you at risk for?
It impairs the body’s responsiveness to insulin, raising blood sugar and insulin levels. Excess body fat contributes to major causes of death and disability, including heart attacks, strokes, high blood pressure, cancer, diabetes, osteoarthritis, fatty liver, and depression.
Why is waist circumference an important indicator?
Why does your waist measurement matter? Waist circumference is a good measure of fat around your middle. This type of fat builds up around your organs, and is linked to high blood fat levels, high blood pressure and diabetes. A larger waist usually also means there is excess fat inside your organs.
What should the waist circumference of a female be to decrease health risk?
Divide your waist measurement by your hip measurement. A healthy range is less than 0.8 inch for women, and 0.9 inch for men.
Is waist circumference better than BMI?
In healthy men waist circumference correlated more strongly with physical fitness (as calculated by a maximal fitness test) than the BMI, whereas in healthy women BMI correlated somewhat more strongly with physical fitness than waist circumference.
What does the waist circumference reflect?
Waist circumference reflects the degree of visceral fat in proportion to body fat. Abdominal or Central Obesity may increase the risk of death from all causes as compared to fat accumulations elsewhere in the body.
Is waist circumference a good indicator of health?
Healthy waists Measuring waist circumference can help to assess obesity-related health risk. Even at a healthy weight, excess fat carried around the waist can increase your risk of high blood pressure, high [blood] cholesterol, heart disease and type-2 diabetes.
Can waist circumference really gauge your body visceral fat levels?
Yes. Waist circumference can also be used to diagnose obesity. Health risks of obesity are correlated with visceral (abdominal) adiposity. People with larger waist sizes have increased risks of obesity-related disorders such as hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes.
Who is most at risk for developing central obesity?
Central obesity was significantly associated with hypertension but not associated with diabetes among those with normal weight (by BMI). Female sex, age over 30 years, marriage, secondary or tertiary level of education, non-smoking status, diabetes and hypertension significantly predicted central obesity among the …
Why is waist circumference a better way to assess cardiometabolic risk?
Waist circumference provides a unique indicator of body fat distribution, which can identify patients who are at increased risk for obesity-related cardiometabolic disease, above and beyond the measurement of BMI.
Is a 30 inch waist healthy?
between 18.5 and 24.9, you’re at lowest risk of developing health problems. between 25 and 29.9, you’re considered overweight. 30 or more, you’re considered obese.
What’s the link between waist size and heart disease?
The study found that even women at a “normal weight” BMI less than 25 were at a higher risk, if they were carrying more of that weight around their waist: Normal-weight women with a waist of 35 inches or higher had three times the risk of death from heart disease, compared to normal-weight women whose waists were smaller than 35 inches.
Is there a relationship between waist size and death?
The Nurses’ Health Study, one of the largest and longest studies to date that has measured abdominal obesity, looked at the relationship between waist size and death from heart disease, cancer, or any cause in middle-aged women.
What are the risks of having a large waist?
Women in the group with the largest waists had a similarly high risk of death from cancer or any cause, compared with women with the smallest waists. The risks increased steadily with every added inch around the waist.
Why is it important to know your waist size?
Several organizations have defined cut-points for abdominal obesity around one or both of these measurements, with different cut-points for men and women ( see table ). In people who are not overweight, having a large waist may mean that they are at higher risk of health problems than someone with a trim waist.