The Invisible killer or visceral fat is scary because it isn’t visible. There are so many people walking around that don’t know they have dangerously high levels of visceral fat.
Before we proceed, let’s differentiate between the two types of fat present in our bodies.
Subcutaneous fat is that fat that just sits under your skin. It’s easy to feel it, just gently pinch your waist. That’s subcutaneous fat.
The other (visceral) fat sits behind the abdominal wall in the abdominal cavity. Visceral fat will accumulate around the organs – your lungs, heart, pancreas, liver and intestines. The more visceral fat you have, the less space your vital organs have to perform their essential tasks.
Invisible Killer Visceral Fat
This poses serious threats to one’s health:
- Raises blood pressure which leads to heart attacks.
- Secretes a hormone that causes inflammation in the body which leads to arthritis and cancer.
- Interferes with the liver and leads to insulin resistance which is the beginning to Type II diabetes.
- Linked to Alzheimer’s and dementia
What are the main causes of visceral fat accumulation:
- Age. The older we get, the more susceptible we are to accumulating visceral fat.
- Poor diet. Being too reliant on processed foods is a major contributor to visceral fat.
- Alcohol. Excess alcohol consumption – think beer belly.
- Exercise. Excess intake of calories without exercise or a means to burn it off will inevitable leady to accumulation of visceral fat.
- Stress. Not well known is that stress triggers a hormone that aids the build-up of visceral fat.
- Not enough sleep.
- Post menopausal women.
First observation you can make is that if you have a large midsection, then the chances are you are probably carrying excess visceral fat.
Another, easy to-do-test, is to check your BMI or Body Mass Index. Click here to use our BMI calculator.
If you require further assistance, please book an initial assessment at your nearest Motivation clinic where we will:
- Complete a full Body Composition Analysis, where we measure your fat, water and muscle percentages, your visceral fat percentage and your metabolic age.
- Assess your measurements, calculate your Body Mass Index (BMI), check your heart rate and blood pressure.
- Examine your current daily eating habits and lifestyle and discuss where you need to make changes.
- This consultation will help to identify what type of plan best suits your needs based on your own personal and unique requirements.
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