Apple Shaped Body

An apple a day may keep the doctor away, but if you are shaped like an apple, with extra weight around the midsection, you will want to keep your doctor around. This body type is medically known as CENTRAL or VISCERAL  ADIPOSITY or popularly as beer or potbelly.  Belly fat actually releases dangerous fatty acids that build up in the liver. This can hamper the body's metabolization of sugar and raise the risk of diabetes.

Having a fatty middle can signal Metabolic Syndrome, a cluster of diabetes and heart disease risk factors that includes insulin resistance, high blood presssure, high blood sugar, hight triglyceride levels, and low HDL (high density lipoprotein or "good" cholesterol) levels. Indeed, people who are apple-shaped are three times more likely to suffer a heart attacks than those who are pear-shaped, that is, carrying most of their fat in their buttocks.

An apple-shaped body is a serious sign that you are also at increased risk for colon cancer. In fact, belly fat is such an importatnt predictor of heart and other diseases that measuring waist circumference during a physical examination may soon become as commonplace as taking your height and weight, and much more revealing. Studies are now showing that waist circumference alone is a better predictor of future cardiovascular problems than just weight or other measures, such as body mass index (BMI) or waist-hip ratio (WHR).

Unfortunately, many menopausal women find that as their age creeps up, so does their weight. Besides being distressing, a gain of more than 44 pounds after menopause puts a woman at increased risk of breast cancer. And the extra pounds can be a forewarning of looming heart trouble. However, it is unclear whether putting on weight late in life is more harmful for women than being overweight for many years.

High triglycerides and low HDL (high density lipoprotein) levels are stronger risk factors for heart disease in women than in men.

A 40-inch waistline in men and a 35-inch waist in women places them at increased risk of heart disease. And women with a 36-inch or larger waist are at increased risk of gallstones.