Want to know your risk of developing heart disease? Here’s a simple trick: Check your waistline.
If you carry more weight around your midsection as opposed to your hips and thighs, known as an apple body shape, you face a higher risk of developing heart disease.
Your gender also matters too: If you’re female with this body shape, you’re more likely to have heart problems.
Research just released in the Journal of the American Heart Association reveals the following:
- Regardless of gender, having an apple-shaped body raises the risk of heart disease. It also raises the risk of having a heart attack, by as much as 50 percent.
- Women face a much higher risk due to their body type. For every 0.09 increase in their waist-to-hip ratio, their risk of having a heart attack increased by 50 percent. Conversely, men only faced a 36 percent heightened risk.
- A higher waist-to-hip ratio in general led to a 10 to 20 percent higher risk of heart disease. This occurred regardless of a person’s body mass index, or BMI. This means that your body fat, and not your weight, ultimately matters here.
So how do you find out if you’re at risk?
Simple: Measure your waist and hip circumference using a soft tape measure. Divide the two numbers to discover the ratio. If it’s above 0.80, your ratio is too high.
