New Delhi: A study has revealed that if you want to reduce hidden belly fat, then quit smoking today itself.
Smokers have lower body weight than nonsmokers, but they have more visceral fat. There is also fat around organs like liver, heart and kidneys. Even a thin person with a flat stomach can have visceral fat.
The new study, published in the scientific journal Addiction, provides evidence that smoking can increase visceral fat in the body and increase the risk of serious diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, stroke and dementia.
“This study found that early smoking initiation and lifelong smoking may lead to increased abdominal fat, as measured by waist-to-hip ratio,” said lead author Dr. German D. Carrasquilla, of the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.Carrying forward the point he said – “In further analysis we also found that the type of fat in the viscera is different from the fat just beneath the skin.”
The team studied 1.2 million people who started smoking and more than 450,000 lifelong smokers. They also conducted a study on the body fat distribution of over 600,000 people.
They examined how DNA variants associated with smoking habits and belly fat were linked to fat in different parts of the body.
Their results showed that “excess abdominal fat in smokers is primarily visceral fat”.
“From a public health perspective, these findings reinforce the importance of large-scale efforts to prevent and reduce smoking in the general population,” said Dr. German. This may also help in reducing visceral fat and all the chronic diseases related to it.”
