Mark another point against smoking: it may cause an increase in a type of body fat linked to serious disease, according to a new study.
Visceral fat isn’t visible — it surrounds your organs within your abdomen. It’s normal and healthy for visceral fat to make up about 10 per cent of your body’s total fat, according to the Cleveland Clinic. Too much visceral fat, however, can create inflammation, contributing to chronic disease.
“Its location and the way it interacts with our body’s functions make it particularly dangerous,” Carrasquilla said in an email. “This type of fat is strongly linked to heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and other metabolic conditions.”
The results show the need for large-scale efforts to prevent and reduce smoking, he said.
“Reducing one major health risk in the population will, indirectly, reduce another major health risk,” Carrasquilla said in a statement.
The research team conducted a statistical analysis called Mendelian randomiSation, which uses genetic differences to study how behaviors or environments lead to different health outcomes.
“By examining genetic data we can infer whether a relationship is causal, going beyond associations,” Carrasquilla said.
The study is well done, and though it provides strong evidence that smoking and increased abdominal fat have a causal, not just correlational, relationship, it is not quite definitive, said Naveed Sattar, professor of cardiometabolic medicine at the University of Glasgow in Scotland. He was not involved in the research.
There could be some confounding elements that make the link between smoking and belly fat stronger, added Dr Andrew Freeman, director of cardiovascular prevention and wellness at National Jewish Health in Denver.
“Bad habits also tend to travel together,” said Freeman, who was not involved in the research. For example, people may reach for a pack of cigarettes when stressed or may be smoking alongside a beer, he said.
cnn
