Waist Circumference Associated With Type 2 Diabetes
Here is a study that points to amount of visceral fat as a dominant contribution to the risk of age-related type-2 diabetes - a condition rarely suffered by people who successfully avoid putting on weight over the years - something that doesn't just happen, but requires exercise and a sensible approach to diet and lifestyle. "A collaborative re-analysis of data from the InterAct case-control study [has] established that waist circumference is associated with risk of type 2 diabetes, independently of body mass index (BMI). Reporting in this week's PLoS Medicine, the researchers estimated the association of BMI and waist circumference with type 2 diabetes from measurements of weight, height and waist circumference, finding that both BMI and waist circumference were independently associated with type 2 diabetes risk but waist circumference was a stronger risk factor in women than in men. ... The prospective InterAct case-cohort study was conducted in 26 centres in eight European countries and consists of 12,403 incident [type 2 diabetes] cases and a stratified subcohort of 16,154 individuals from a total cohort of 340,234 participants with 3.99 million person-years of follow-up. ... These findings indicate that targeted measurement of waist circumference in overweight individuals (who now account for a third of the US and UK adult population) could be an effective strategy for the prevention of diabetes because it would allow the identification of a high-risk subgroup of people who might benefit from individualised lifestyle advice. ... Our results clearly show the value that measurement of [waist circumference] may have in identifying which people among the large population of overweight individuals are at highest risk of diabetes." A risk that is essentially yours to create, remove, or manage through the choices you make.
Link: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-06/plos-wcl053112.php