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Posted by theanonymousone 13 hours ago

Abdominal fat predicts heart disease risk better than BMI(www.acc.org)
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC13470613/
252 points | 187 commentspage 2
chr15m 10 hours ago|
You can control your CVD risk.

Cutting saturated fat to under 15g per day and increasing intake of viscose fibre (e.g. beans) will reduce your LDL particle count in a few weeks, which reduces your CVD hazard ratio. You can measure your LDL and look up the papers yourself. Statins will reduce it a lot too (potentially with side effects). Replace solid fats like butter with liquid fats like olive oil.

Literally any amount of regular exercise, including walking, will decrease CVD HR. The more the better (up until quite a large amount e.g. professional athlete). The more your heart is steadily pumping during exercise the better. Every bit helps reduce CVD risk. Movement is medicine.

For the love of God do not smoke. Literally one of the surest ways to die a horrible death. Stopping smoking reduces CVD risk by a large amount.

Do not give yourself diabetes by eating vast amounts of sugar. If you are doing this, stop. Not having diabetes decreases CVD risk.

Other factors you probably can't change so focus on these.

Doctors, if I got anything wrong please correct me.

zargon 2 hours ago||
> Do not give yourself diabetes by eating vast amounts of sugar. If you are doing this, stop. Not having diabetes decreases CVD risk.

Not eating vast quantities of sugar is good advice, but it's not the direct cause of T2 diabetes. The best evidence suggests that T2 diabetes is caused by the accumulation of fat in the liver and pancreas. See the twin cycle hypothesis. To prevent diabetes, one needs to maintain a weight low enough where the body isn't storing fat in the liver and pancreas (everyone has their own individual threshold for this). If you're pre-diabetic, lose enough weight and most people will regain insulin sensitivity.

chr15m 1 hour ago||
Interesting, thanks!
loeg 6 hours ago|||
> Do not give yourself diabetes by eating vast amounts of sugar.

This can help sustain a high level of exercise (the more the better). Certainly don't if you're sedentary, but the sugar during exercise is really helpful for getting in 10+ hours/week of exercise.

someothherguyy 3 hours ago||
I think the recent stance (not really recent in terms of assumptive idea, but now there is evidence) is that not all forms of sugar intake are equal. For instance, habitually drinking beverages with sugar in them (what are called sugar-sweetened-beverages in literature) is associated with a risk of developing T2D, where getting sugar from normal foods isn't really.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13668-026-00740-w

chr15m 1 hour ago||
Interesting, thanks!

> habitually drinking... sugar-sweetened-beverages

Yes, terrible idea, avoid!

Noaidi 10 hours ago||
You said all this like you know something, but you didn’t bring up oxidative stress once. I mean, smoking is the leading cause for increasing oxygen stress in the body so you kind of mentioned it there but oxidative stress can be controlled with nutrients like zinc, copper, and manganese.
SoftTalker 12 hours ago||
> Studies have shown that visceral fat, which is fat that surrounds the internal organs in the abdominal area, is associated with chronic diseases like heart disease and diabetes, while subcutaneous fat, which is located directly under the skin, is not as strongly associated.

How does one determine if one has an excess of visceral fat?

nradov 9 hours ago||
A DXA (DEXA) scan will quantify visceral fat for you. This is a non-invasive scan which uses a low-dose x-ray. Most cities have some sort of sports medicine facility where you can get one. It's typically not covered by health insurance but fairly cheap to pay out of pocket.

https://health.ucdavis.edu/sports-medicine/resources/dxa-inf...

sn9 10 hours ago|||
A waist measurement is the cheapest and simplest way other than just looking.

You want to make sure you measure under similar conditions, like in the morning after relieving yourself (for example).

If it's too high, losing a ~0.5-1 lbs per week while strength and endurance training with progressive overload will get it down sustainably.

https://www.barbellmedicine.com/blog/visceral-fat-waist-vs-w...

lowbloodsugar 12 hours ago|||
There are scans for like $50 that will tell you. Google Dexa scan or something like that.
dplgk 6 hours ago||
$50? Are you talking about US Healthcare where $50 just gets you a call to the receptionist?
loeg 6 hours ago||
Calls to the receptionist are universally free. Your hate on the US healthcare model (not without flaws) is detached from reality.
JKCalhoun 11 minutes ago||
(I took the OP's comment to be somewhat sarcastic—exaggerated for effect.)
noemit 11 hours ago||
whats wild is there are people who look very fat - who have lots of subcutaneous fat, who don't have visceral fat. The excessive subcutaneous fat can be hard on your joints but doesn't seem to correlate to other health issues.
ellyagg 9 hours ago||
Very interesting, now if only you could measure abdominal fat without need expensive specialists.
liveoneggs 9 hours ago|
https://www.lih.lu/en/visceral-fat-calculator/ (thigh one)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waist%E2%80%93hip_ratio (hip to waist)

incognito124 11 hours ago||
take a look at myticker.com

(previously at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45857053)

BaculumMeumEst 12 hours ago||
For two people that are the same height, one could have X lbs of pure muscle, and one could have X lbs of pure fat, and they would have the same BMI. Color me shocked that it is not always a good predictor of disease.
trentearl 55 minutes ago||
If the muscular person has an obese bmi he is still unhealthy though.
draw_down 11 hours ago||
My problem is it’s usually the second guy advancing this argument.
jona-f 5 hours ago||
Sugar is a drug and this whole discussion beats around the bush.
j45 6 hours ago||
I am not sure if this is adjusted appropriately for different groups who are much more or less pre-disposed to heart disease.
skywhopper 9 hours ago||
Yeah because it has an actual correlation, whereas BMI is a ridiculously oversimplified measurement designed for population statistics based on what data is easily available, not individual assessment.
Noaidi 10 hours ago|
It doesn’t matter how fat you are or how much cholesterol you have in your blood. What matters is the oxidative stress that oxidizes the lipids.

They need to figure out a way to reliably Measure OXLDL.

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