Why Weight

Lose Your Love Handles and Improve Lung Capacity

By Kirsten Whittaker

Take a deep breath - if you have a little extra belly fat about the middle; doing this might be harder for you than for someone with a trimmer waistline, which makes the effort to lose your love handles all the more important - this according to a recent large-scale, population based study conducted by French researchers that appears in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

We've all heard that a larger waistline puts you at risk for a variety of health problems - to say nothing of how it makes you feel - now there's proof that being big around the middle can affect your lungs, and not in a good way...

The research relied on 120,000 men and women (recruits at French clinics between 1999 and 2006) and was looking for an association between lung function and metabolic syndrome.

Metabolic syndrome is a collection of risk factors (cholesterol problems, high blood pressure, insulin resistance) that come along with those extra inches around the midsection.

Anyone with metabolic syndrome is at increased risk of coronary heart disease or type 2 diabetes - estimates currently have over 50 million Americans with this dangerous condition.

For the study, abdominal obesity was categorized using well-known boundaries...

A waist circumference larger than 35 inches (89 cm) for women; 40 inches (102 cm) for men was considered in the abdominally obese range. If you'd like to take your own waist measurement, just for fun, grab a tape measure and:

1) Find your upper hipbone, from there the measurement should be taken just about one inch above your navel.

2) Holding the start of the tape measure in place, bring the remaining tape around your abdomen using firm (but not enough to compress the skin) pressure. Be sure the measuring tape is straight, and lying flat all the way around.

3) You waist measurement is the number where the measuring tape you've put around your waist crosses over the starting point.

The participants in the study had physical exams, blood tests, waistline measurements, tests of lung function and reported on their smoking status.

Subjects who had metabolic syndrome were almost 1.4 times more likely to have impaired lung function as well.

But unexpectedly, those with extra belly fat were twice as likely to have problems with breathing - even if their overall weight was normal.

What's more, this decreased lung capacity was independent of smoking history and even overall BMI.

The link remained even after the researchers excluded subjects who had cardiovascular or respiratory diseases.

It appears that the abdominal obesity has an impact on breathing that we are only just beginning to recognize.

Even woman with a waist measurement at the 35 inch mark had an 8% drop in lung capacity.
The leader of the study, Dr Natalie Leone of the French National Institute for Health and Medical Research, explains, "We found a positive independent relationship between lung function impairment and metabolic syndrome due mainly to abdominal obesity."

The next step would be to study the underlying biology of the decreased lung function in those with larger waist measurements.

Today researchers are just beginning to understand the link between abdominal fat and trouble breathing.

There are several theories...

Carrying weight around the middle might affect breathing by restricting the diaphragm or chest wall making it harder for the lungs to fill with air - a mechanical difficulty of sorts.

Other explanations suggest that fat tissue may increase inflammatory processes in the whole body, and this could bring on breathing problems.

The editorial that appears with the study suggests physicians measure the waist of patients who are undergoing respiratory tests.

If you're carrying more fat around the middle than you'd like, and are having trouble breathing, a visit to your doctor is in order.

The French research points out, yet again, the importance of living a healthy, active lifestyle and working to lose the love handles so that dangerous belly fat doesn't get the chance to settle in and get comfortable.

Next just head on over to the Daily Health Bulletin for more information on losing stomach fat fast and get 5 free health reports.
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posted by Cheryl Levesque @ 7:38 PM