Tag Archives: visceral fat

Low-fiber diet linked to heart disease

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Adolescents who don’t eat enough fiber tend to have bigger bellies and higher levels of inflammatory factors in their blood, both of which are major risk factors for cardiovascular disease and diabetes, a new study has revealed.

The study of 559 adolescents age 14-18 from Augusta, Ga., showed they consumed on average about one-third of the daily recommended amount of fiber, said Norman Pollock, bone biologist at the Medical College of Georgia and the Institute of Public and Preventive Health at Georgia Health Sciences University.

“The simple message is adolescents need to eat more fruits, vegetables and whole grains,” Pollock, one co-author of the study, said.

“We need to push recommendations to increase fiber intake,” he said.

Only about 1 percent of the young participants consumed the recommended daily intake of 28 grams for females and 38 grams for males. The study appears the first to correlate dietary fiber intake with inflammatory markers in adolescents.

Better understanding the relationships and risks of diet, inactivity and obesity in children and adolescents is particularly critical at a time when about 1 in 3 is overweight or obese, Samip Parikh, another co-author of the study, said.

That’s nearly triple the rate since 1963, according to the American Heart Association.

Low-fiber consumers in the study were more likely to have more of the visceral fat found in and around major organs in their abdominal cavity.

The heart

The heart

They also tended to have higher levels of inflammatory factors, such as immune cells called cytokines, as well as lower levels of protective adiponection, a protein secreted by fat that helps the body use glucose and fight inflammation. Interestingly, adiponectin levels tend to drop when fat becomes excessive and obesity is generally considered a chronic inflammatory state.


Exactly how fiber helps stave off some of these unhealthy consequences is not completely clear, Parikh said.

Hypotheses include increased bulk in the stool causing digested food to spend less time in the gastrointestinal tract and the ability of fiber to improve insulin sensitivity, potentially reducing visceral adiposity.

More indirectly, fiber tends to speed satiety, potentially decreasing total food and caloric consumption, Parikh said. It may also help absorb and eliminate inflammatory factors.

While belly fat and high inflammatory factors are inexorably linked to bad consequences such as heart disease and often occur together, one did not directly cause the other in this instance, Pollock noted.

He was co-first author earlier this year of a study on the same group of adolescents that showed high-fructose consumption correlated with higher blood pressure, fasting glucose, insulin resistance and inflammatory factors as well as lower levels of cardiovascular protectors such as such as HDL cholesterol and adiponectin.

These dangerous associations were exacerbated by belly fat.

“There is some other mechanism (for increased inflammatory factors associated with low-fiber intake),” Pollock noted.

Apples may fight the fat

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A new study gives more reasons for tucking into soluble fibre.

It may be the fat that you can see that bothers you, but science has been telling us for a while now that it’s the hidden fat in our bodies that’s the most dangerous. Visceral fat surrounds our vital organs and protects them. However, if you have too much of this fat it can cause serious health problems.

A study carried out at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in North Carolina has reported a simple way to target and reduce that hidden visceral fat. We need to eat more soluble fibre, found in vegetables, fruit and beans, and do more moderate activity.

The study looked at 1,114 people aged from 18 to 81, over the course of five years. At the beginning of the study all the participants had a CT (computerised tomography) scan. This is the only way to accurately measure how much subcutaneous and visceral fat we have. All the subjects also had a physical exam and answered an extensive questionnaire on their lifestyle. Five years later they went through the same process again.

The results of the study showed that for every extra 10 grams of soluble fibre the participants consumed each day, visceral fat was reduced by 3.7 percent over five years. And increasing the amount of moderate activity resulted in a 7.4 percent decrease in the rate of visceral fat accumulated over five years.

Apples

Apples

“We know that a higher rate of visceral fat is associated with high blood pressure, diabetes and fatty liver disease,” said Kristen Hairston, MD, assistant professor of internal medicine at Wake Forest Baptist, and the lead researcher on the study. “Our study found that making a few simple changes can have a big health impact.”

Hairston explained that you can add 10 grams of soluble fibre to your diet by eating two small apples or 150g of green peas. Moderate activity involves exercising vigorously for 30 minutes, two to four times a week (it’s important to check with your GP before suddenly starting any new exercise regime).


“There is mounting evidence that eating more soluble fibre and increasing exercise reduces visceral or belly fat, although we still don’t know how it works,” Hairston said. “Although the fibre-obesity relationship has been extensively studied, the relationship between fibre and specific fat deposits has not. Our study is valuable because it provides specific information on how dietary fibre, especially soluble fibre, may affect weight accumulation though abdominal fat deposits.”

“Anything that reduces visceral fat is a good thing,” says Ursula Arens, spokesperson for the British Dietetic Association (BDA). “Eating more fibre generally is a long-running health story. There’s a very practical, common-sense understanding that if you eat three apples a day, for instance, you’ll feel fuller, and this will help to reduce the amount of food that you eat.”

“Good sources of soluble fibre include oats, which you’ll find in porridge, and to some degree in muesli. You’ll also find it in fruit and vegetables. For instance apples, strawberries, grapes, pears and peas, and any type of beans, including baked beans.”