What is Belly Fat?

What is Belly Fat?

No matter what our body shape, excess fat isn’t good for your health. Saddlebags and ballooning bellies are not equivalent. When it comes to body fat, location counts, and each year brings new evidence that the fat lying deep within the abdomen is more dangerous than the fat you can pinch with your fingers.

In most people, about 90 percent of body fat is subcutaneous, the kind that lies in a layer just beneath the skin. The remaining 10 percent, called visceral fat lies out of reach, beneath the firm abdominal wall. It is found surrounding the heart, lungs, liver, intestines, and other organs. Although visceral fat makes up only a small portion of body fat, it is a key player in several health problems.

As women go through their middle years, their proportion of fat to body weight tends to increase more than it does in men. Even if you don’t actually gain weight, your waistline can grow by inches as visceral fat pushes out against the abdomen wall.

Research has found that fat cells, particularly visceral fat cells, are biologically active. Before researchers recognized that fat acts as an endocrine gland, they thought that the main risk of visceral fat was influencing the production of cholesterol by releasing free fatty acids into the bloodstream and liver. Researchers have identified a host of chemicals that link visceral fat to a surprising wide variety of diseases.

Subcutaneous fat produces a higher proportion of beneficial molecules, and visceral fat a higher proportion of molecules with potentially deleterious health effects. health.harvard.edu