LifeCare Chiropractic

The Best Chiropractic Care in Mesa, Arizona

visceral fat

Abdominal Fat Measurements = Heart Fat

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There is nothing good about visceral fat.  Many just worry about the aesthetics of it, but the reality is that visceral fat wreaks havoc on long term health.

The current model of visceral adipose tissue puts this type of fat as its own organ system.  The only problem is that this organ system, instead of working with your body, is an invader trying to survive.

Here’s how it goes:

  • Fat has always been a storage tissue for extra calories.
  • Lord knows we got enough of these in today’s society.
  • The fat begins to accumulate.
  • For awhile this is ok, but past a certain point these fat cells begin to run out of an adequate blood supply.

After all, these cells need nutrients just like every other cell, but there is only so much blood flow to go around.  Once the fat cells don’t have the nutrients they need, they get pissed off.  Pissed off fat cells begin to generate pissed off hormones called adipokines that drive inflammation and damage elsewhere in the body.

This is how visceral fat leads to poor blood vessel health (heart attack, stroke, dementia) and other problems like cancer.

While we generally think of fat accumulated around the abdominal region, it also accumulates around other organs like the heart, termed epicardial fat.  The problem with epicardial fat is that it is so close to the heart that the hormones released can have a greater effect.  The way we usually look for epicardial fat is through an echocardiogram, but this isn’t exactly practical for routine use.  Enter this particular study.

Researchers looked at whether we could use the sagittal abdominal diameter as an indirect marker for epidcardial fat without the hassle of an echocardiogram.  The sagittal abdominal diameter is measured by a set of calipers, measuring the distance from the small of the back to near the belly button region while lying down.

The findings in this study suggest that measuring the sagittal abdominal diameter is a pretty darn good way to indirectly measure the amount of fat surrounding your heart.

I found this study pleasantly rewarding since our office recent implemented the use of a “laser liposuction” unit (you can read more about this service by clicking here).  I realized quickly that the patients seeing the most dramatic results were the ones with the most inflammatory belly fat.  Since laser has been known for many years to increase blood flow and decrease inflammation, this makes complete sense.

Using laser to calm down inflammatory body fat, according to this study, is also highly likely to lower the fat accumulated around your heart as well.  Not a bad bang for your buck.

How Much is Liposuction Side Effects Going to Cost You?

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If you’ve been looking into liposuction, you’ve probably know how much is liposuction, but have you considered long term costs due to liposuction side effects?

And I’m not talking about the side effects immediately following the procedure like swelling and bruising and pain.  Rather, we’re talking about long term damage to your health.

We certainly live in a world where we seemingly do not have to work for what we want.  We have plastic surgery, gastric bypass surgery, hormone replacement therapy (both male AND female) and Botox, just to name a few.

All of these promise youthful appearances and vigor without all the hard work.  And really, in a society that does research to find the absolute littlest amount of aerobic exercise we can do and still get a benefit, does this come as a surprise?

Enter liposuction.

Short of the actual surgical procedure, there are any number of procedures that promise the same results: cold sculpting, cold laser sculpting, smart lipo and many more.

But for those wanting guaranteed results, liposuction is the way to go.

Before you pick up the phone to call your local plastic surgeon, you need to understand something first.

This particular article looked at what happens to fat redistribution after liposuction.  Yes–fat REdistribution.  Just when you thought you were getting it sucked out and gotten rid of, it shows up somewhere else.

The only problem is that this time is shows up as a 10% increase in visceral fat — the dangerous, artery damaging type of fat.  Not cool.

Luckily, the authors were able to determine that, in those participants who were physically active, this shift to visceral fat did not occur.

So, in case you thought you could get away from exercising into a better body using surgery, you need to think again.  I think I have mentioned a time or two that healthy lifestyle changes, to include diet, stress management, environmental chemical avoidance and exercise, is the only thing that won’t kill you before it saves you.

If you have had liposuction in the past, did you notice any redistribution of your body fat?