The largest study of its kind to study the connection between life threatening diseases and waist size has been published in Monday’s Archives of Internal Medicine.
The findings serve to reinforce previous messages about the danger signals represented by bulging bellies in older adults. One of the main messages to come out of the study is that
people with larger tummies have twice the likelihood of dying over a ten year period than their slimmer counterparts. And it does not matter if your BMI (Body Mass Index) is within ‘normal’ bounds, according to lead author Eric Jacobs.
“Even if you haven’t had a noticeable weight gain, if you notice your waist size increasing that’s an important sign,” “It’s time to eat better and start exercising more.”
The study, funded by the American Cancer Society, gives further credence to the mounting body of evidence suggested by other research that links waist size to to diseases such as heart disease, breast cancer, asthma and dementia.
To check your own waistline you should measure around the area of your navel. Men should have a circumference of no more than 40 inches, 35 for women.
The study followed 100,000 people from 1997 to 2006, during which time nearly 15,000 of them died. According to the results, an extra four inches of fat around the waist can increase the risk of death by 15-25 %. Another finding was that respiratory disease, cancer and heart disease were more predominant in people with with bigger waist sizes.
The authors acknowledge that because participants measured themselves, the figures recorded could possibly have been prone to wishful thinking or mistakes. Also, because the study was carried out by observational experiment, deemed a less rigorous approach, it’s possible that the deaths could have been caused by factors other than waist size. However, other factors such as smoking and alcohol use were taken into account.
