We are constantly told that visceral or belly fat is bad. Why? An important reason is that belly fat causes chronic inflammation. There are a couple of others things that are bad about belly fat, but a lot of the problems that result from visceral fat are due to inflammation.

I was just reading a short post on the diet blog. The post was about the recent finding that analysis of data in the big nurses study that waist size was important than weight. There were a string of comments that speculated about why this should be, so I added a comment. Then I thought I would write a post explaining the role of inflammation in the potential long-term consequences of having a big belly with skinny arms and legs.

First it is important to understand we need to have some fat and that not all fat is the same. The fat that we have under our skin round our arms, hips and so on, is called subcutaneous fat. The fat round our abdominal organs and in a potbelly is visceral fat. These two types of fat have some differences, including some of the hormones and other proteins, such as cytokines, that they pump out into the body.

Cytokines are part of the system that the body uses to mount an immune response against pathogens, such as bacteria. However, when they are present at high levels or made inappropriately then they can start to damage the body. The presence of a large amount of belly fat results in high levels of cytokines in the blood. The result is that the body is constantly in a state of inflammation.

Chronic inflammation can have bad consequences over the long term. Think about it as the body being constantly irritated. Long term consequences of inflammation include increases in blood pressure and development of heart disease. Some of the cytokines cause inflammation of endothelial cell, the cells that line blood vessels. This inflammation results in increased blood pressure. Atherosclerosis (build up of plaque) is accelerated by inflammation, and so the rate of development of heart disease may be increased.

End of biology lesson.

photo credit: TreatInfamy

[tags]visceral fat, belly fat, chronic inflammation, cytokine, high blood pressure, atherosclerosis[/tags]