A major European study called EUROASPIRE V found that nearly two-thirds of people with a high risk of cardiovascular disease had excess belly fat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The study, which surveyed people to determine the prevalence of diabetes and cardiovascular disease, found that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 64% had \u201ccentral obesity,\u201d a term used to describe excess belly fat<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 37% were overweight<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 18% were smokers<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 only 36% were exercising for at least 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 Only 43% of people using lipid-lowering medication had reached the LDL cholesterol target (under 2.5 millimoles per liter).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 Only 47% of people taking high blood pressure meds were achieving their target (under 140\/90 millimeters of mercury or under 140\/85 if they had diabetes).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 Only 65% of people receiving treatment for type 2 diabetes had attained their target blood sugar (under 7.0% HbA1c).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 Many people with high cholesterol or high blood pressure weren\u2019t getting treatment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The study included 78 primary care practices from 16 countries, mostly in Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A previous study, which was presented at the European Society of Cardiology Congress in April 2018, found that excels belly fat is bad for the heart, even for people whose BMI is normal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At that presentation, the researchers urged doctors not to assume that having a normal BMI means there is no heart-related issue. They advised general practitioners to measure central obesity, not just BMI, becauseBMI doesn\u2019t necessarily indicate normal fat distribution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
EUROASPIRE Steering Committee Chair Kornelia Kotseva points out, \u201cA large proportion of individuals at high risk cardiovascular disease have unhealthy lifestyle habits and uncontrolled blood pressure, lipids and diabetes. In our study, many participants with high blood pressure and cholesterol were not being treated. These data make it clear that more efforts must be made to improve cardiovascular prevention in people at high risk of cardiovascular disease.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A new study has linked excess belly fat to a greater risk of stroke and heart disease.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13191,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[703],"tags":[880,743,750,719],"class_list":["post-13111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-weight-loss","tag-belly-fat","tag-heart-disease","tag-stroke","tag-wellness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13111\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}