Manbir Online ...What is more Important - Your Weight or Your Shape ?

What is more Important - Your Weight or Your Shape ?

The ultimate risk of diseases in relation of obesity is not the weight but the shape of the weight your body carries.

Now many studies before have established the fact that if you have a pear shape - namely carrying most of your fat in your butt and your thighs - you are better off than an apple shape where your waist measurement is beyond your hip measurement.

Here is an eight-year followup to the nurse’s health study which began with almost 45,000 women.

A definite pattern emerged which tells you that it's not how much you weigh, but where that weight is that can be critical for heart disease.

For woman, risk for dying from heart disease is much greater than the risk of dying from breast cancer and yet, the latter seems to get a lot more attention and fear.

To find out what the risks are this simple test would help.

First, let’s start with waist-hip ratio.

To measure your waist-hip ratio, measure your waist at the level of your belly button and your hips at the largest circumference with a tape measure.

On division of waist and hip measures we get the waist -hip ratio which should be somewhere between .7 to 1.0.

If it's above one, that implies your waist is larger than your hips.

That's not good.

Now let’s go for the body mass index.

The body mass index, or BMI, is the ratio of your weight in kilograms divided by your height in meters squared.

It is now found that even if your BMI is higher than desirable, it doesn't seem to make as much difference as your waist-hip ratio.

BMI's of less than 25 has been considered desirable, over 25 is considered to be undesirable.

It is also to be understood that the risk for women under the age of 60 is more pronounced than women over the age of 60. The risk factors that we are concerned here are mainly for coronary heart disease which includes non fatal heart attacks as well as fatal heart attacks.

If your waist-hip ratio is .72 or below, you are the standard, and don't at least have to worry about heart attacks based on your body shape.

If your waist-hip ratio is .72 to .76 and you are under 60, your risk is 1.7 times higher than the standard or 70 percent higher.

If your ratio is .76 to .80, your risk is two and a half times higher.

If your ratio is .80 to .88, your risk approaches three times higher.

If your waist-hip ratio is over .88, your risk is four and a half times higher.

If you are older than 60, the top category of risk is 1.9 times higher so you can see that the effects of this are diminished in women over the age of 60, implying that extra abdominal fat is less risky for older woman.

Now here is the major point of this study. With minor exceptions, it didn't matter whether your body mass index was under 25 or over 25. In other words, an overweight woman, if she has more of an hour-glass figure, seems to be protected.

In addition, you can look at the absolute waist circumference measurements.
At 71.1 centimeters, your waist is fine.

At a waist circumference of 81.3 to 86.4 centimeters, your risk is a couple of times higher.

If your ratio is over 96 centimeters, and you are under 60, your risk is up four times. If you are over 60, your risk is only up two times.

A waist circumference above 100 cm in men and above 90 cm in women is associated with increased levels of triglyceride and reduced levels of HDL cholesterol.

So, for those who are in a high risk category its important to take preventive measures concerning exercise and cholesterol and take care of oneself as best as possible.