Understanding Visceral Fat
What is Visceral Fat?
Understanding the hidden fat that affects your health
Subcutaneous fat (fat stored directly under the skin) plays an important role in maintaining metabolic health and acts as a safe store absorbing excess energy until it is needed.
However, if calories are consumed in excess of the body's needs the subcutaneous fat cells slowly fill up and reach saturation, eventually leading to excessive internal visceral fat. The excess fat spills into the blood stream and is stored as visceral fat within the abdominal cavity, and fat infiltrates the liver tissue and skeletal-muscle tissue.
Benefits and Risks
The essential role of visceral fat and when it becomes a concern
Everyone has some visceral fat. Young people have relatively little but it starts to increase quickly after the age of 50. Visceral fat acts as an endocrine organ and secretes several hormones and chemicals, many of which play an essential role in the human body, for example, cytokines. Cytokines are essential for maintaining a healthy immune system.
Having the right amount of cytokines, signalling correctly, is important for infection control but high levels can lead to excessive inflammation. Visceral fat is also vital to regulate body temperature and protect organs. Insufficient levels of visceral fat interfere with hormone balance and very low amounts can also deplete the immune system, leaving us vulnerable to infection.
We need a basic level of visceral fat but there is a limit and that is before we reach the point when the visceral fat starts to impact on the liver and the effectiveness of the subcutaneous fat layer for storing energy.
Increased Risk of Metabolic Disease with Age
Understanding your visceral fat levels
The risk of metabolic disease increases with age and age is consistently associated with metabolic dysfunction and declining healthspan in men and women. It is also associated with increased accumulation of visceral fat. This increase is dramatic in women as the amount of visceral fat increases fourfold between the ages of 25 and 65 years. In men it doubles in the same age range.
Men have over 70cm2 of visceral fat in their 30s whilst women have just over 30 cm2. It is difficult to know exactly how much visceral fat is too much. However, the majority of men and women in their 50s have more visceral fat than the recommended risk levels of 100cm2 for women and 130 cm2 for men. The risk of cardiovascular and metabolic disease increases dramatically once the area of visceral fat exceeds 160 cm2.
What is the best way to measure visceral fat
One of the best ways of tracking visceral fat is to take a DEXA scan. This provides a measurement of visceral fat, and the BodyView consultants can talk you through your results and give you actionable advice.
Example from our report
There is a correlation between the area of visceral fat in the body, metabolic health and healthspan. A DEXA scan can give a good analysis of accurate visceral fat score in kilograms and cm2, and has the added advantage of being able to give accurate results on other metrics such as bone density and lean mass.
Frequently Asked Questions