India's increasing waistline as vital marker for disease risk

Obesity around the center of the body is the most dangerous kind of fat people rarely measure, a study has found out.

Abdominal obesity, an accumulation of fat around the stomach and abdomen of a person has been associated with high metabolic and cardiovascular risk.

In India, body weight is recorded for many, body mass index (BMI) for few and waistline for the least, said the study published in Science Direct.

For the longest, BMI has been taken as a standard measure of obesity across different health systems, however, experts are doubting if it is enough in measuring disease risk, particularly among Asians.

Among Indians, abdominal obesity was prominent despite normal or modest increase in the body mass index (BMI), the study said.

Measuring a person’s waist to height ratio is the best way to measure abdominal obesity, which is a rising concern among Asians.

The findings suggest BMI may not be an adequate tool to assess obesity, with experts implying the need to also take waist circumference into consideration.

Why is abdominal obesity more dangerous?

A person is said to have abdominal obesity if they have excess intra-abdominal fat, along with increased liver and pancreatic fat.

This kind of fat is not present in the extremities but around the internal organs, making it more problematic than general obesity which is distributed around muscles. 

Visceral or abdominal fat often show up as a high waist circumference.

As per the study, a higher waist circumference was associated with multiple cardiovascular risk factors and liver disease, enabling an increased flux of fatty acids into the liver and pancreas.

Among the 2050 adults studied, people with lower waist circumference were found to be at lower risks of metabolic diseases. 

Women and low income groups on risk

Higher waist circumference was found to be more prominent among women and girls, with about five to six out of every 10 women in India (30-49 years of age) being abdominally obese.

A waist circumference of at least 80 cm in women and 94 cm in men affects about 40 percent of women and 12 percent of men in India.

The study also found out abdominal fat among women was also associated with increasing age, urban spaces, higher socio-economic status and non-vegetarian diets.

Likewise, it was not confined to urban population alone, and was slowly finding its way into the rural population and among the low income groups.

Six years early to get heart disease

The study showed that South Asians develop heart attacks nearly six years earlier than other populations.

The number was high because of metabolic irregularities like diabetes, elevated lipid and abdominal obesity at younger ages.

People with abdominal fat were more likely to develop kidney diseases because of excess fat around the internal organs.

Among 2091 adults surveyed in a Karnataka-based study, about 6.3 percent to 16.5 percent abdominally obese people had kidney diseases.

Also, abdominal fat emerged as an important predictor of osteoarthritis among the South Indian population.