Visceral Fat is Harmful to Your Health but Can You Measure It?

February 27, 2022

by Cathe Friedrich

Visceral fat is a hot topic since having too much of it is linked to a higher risk of health problems including type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Too much visceral fat is at an epidemic level due to poor diet and lack of physical activity. What’s more, it’s harmful to the population’s collective health. But how do you know if you have too much visceral fat? Can you measure it?

What is Visceral Fat?

Before you discover how to measure it, you first must know what visceral fat is. Visceral fat is a type of fat located deep inside your abdomen, inside and around your organs (think: liver, kidney, pancreas). This is different from subcutaneous fat, which is under your skin, just below the surface where it’s squishy and pinchable.

Visceral fat is metabolically active, meaning it produces hormones and other substances that can affect your health in a negative way. Scientists also recently discovered that fat cells make ADAMTS1, a hormone that tells fat stem cells to store excess calories from the food you eat. In addition, visceral fat also releases inflammatory chemicals that fuel insulin resistance and weight gain.

Why Does Visceral Fat Increase the Risk of Health Problems?

The reason visceral fat is bad fat is that it’s much more biologically active than other forms of fat. Visceral fat produces hormones and inflammatory substances that can wreak havoc on your body. As visceral fat accumulates, it pushes up against your liver, intestines, kidneys, and other organs in your abdomen. It also releases chemicals into your bloodstream that promote the further accumulation of visceral fat.

It’s not entirely understood why visceral fat is harmful to health. One theory is that the chemicals it releases interfere with insulin regulation. Insulin controls blood sugar levels in your body by telling cells to take in glucose from the bloodstream. Too much visceral fat can disrupt this regulation and cause high blood sugar levels (hyperglycemia), which can lead to diabetes or even nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease is another “hidden” tsunami with many people not knowing they have it.

The inflammatory substances visceral fat releases can also damage blood vessels. It encourages small deposits of plaque to build up in blood vessels, increasing the risk of a clot forming and blocking blood flow, leading to a stroke or heart attack.

Plus, a study shows that visceral fat cells in type 2 diabetics secrete a protein called tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-alpha) into the bloodstream. TNF-alpha activates immune cells, which trigger inflammation and plaque buildup. This leads to a greater risk for cardiovascular disease and an overall inflammatory state in your body.

In a nutshell, these factors increase the risk of health issues, particularly cardiovascular disease. That’s why it’s so important to reduce your body’s visceral fat burden through diet and lifestyle. The typical American diet of junk food does nothing to keep visceral fat in check.

Can You Measure Visceral Fat?

By now, you’re probably wondering how much visceral fat you have. The most precise way to measure visceral fat is to use an imaging study like magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or computed tomography. (CT) But these tests are expensive, and CT exposes you to radiation. A less precise way to estimate your visceral fat burden is to measure your waist size.

In men, a waistline larger than 40 inches, and in women, 35 inches, is a marker for too much visceral fat. Ideally, your waist size should be no more than half your height. So, if you’re 5 feet 6 inches, or 66 inches, a waist size over 33 inches is a sign you have too much visceral fat. If yours is greater than that, it’s time to make lifestyle changes.

Guidelines for Reducing Visceral Fat

Once you know you need to reduce the amount of visceral fat in your body, what’s the best way to do it? Taming visceral fat requires a lifestyle change. Here are some lifestyle changes, backed by science, that can help reduce visceral fat:

Eat more fiber-rich fruits and vegetables
Get at least 30 minutes of exercise that boosts your heart rate every day
Get at least 7 hours of quality sleep per night
Have a way to manage stress, as stress increases cortisol, which boosts visceral fat
Remove ultra-processed foods, refined carbohydrates, and sugar from your diet
Get natural light exposure early in the day (before noon) to properly set your internal biological clock.

The Bottom Line

Visceral fat is bad news for your health. It can be measured precisely through imaging and less accurately by measuring the size of your waist. If you’re concerned about your visceral fat, talk to your doctor. Though the role of this type of fat hasn’t been fully established, it makes sense that you should strive to keep it at a healthy level. The less visceral fat you carry, the better off you will be.

References:

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“The Skinny on Visceral Fat – Hopkins Medicine.” hopkinsmedicine.org/gim/faculty-resources/core_resources/Patient%20Handouts/Handouts_May_2012/The%20Skinny%20on%20Visceral%20Fat.pdf.
Ozato N, Saito S, Yamaguchi T, Katashima M, Tokuda I, Sawada K, Katsuragi Y, Imoto S, Ihara K, Nakaji S. Association between Nutrients and Visceral Fat in Healthy Japanese Adults: A 2-Year Longitudinal Study Brief Title: Micronutrients Associated with Visceral Fat Accumulation. Nutrients. 2019 Nov 7;11(11):2698. doi: 10.3390/nu11112698. PMID: 31703461; PMCID: PMC6893766.”Taking Aim at Belly Fat – Harvard Health Publishing ….” 12 Apr. 2021, health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/taking-aim-at-belly-fat.
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