A new American study suggests some middle-age-spread is more harmful than others – here’s how to tell the difference However we try to hide it with ferocious Lycra knickers or a baggy top, there’s no escaping the squishy area of flesh that accumulates around our middle from midlife onwards. Every decade gives it a different name: middle age-spread , muffin top, beer belly or wine-waist – but cheerful as the nicknames may be, the consequences of belly fat are potentially serious. Received wisdom is that accumulating fat around the centre of our body as a product of fine-living is simply not good for our physical health .
In most people, 90% of fat is the kind that lies in a layer just beneath the skin, and this is known as subcutaneous fat. The flesh you can wobble on your thighs or the top of your arms is subcutaneous fat. Even the inch you can pinch on your stomach is probably of the same type.
But the remaining 10% – which is known as visceral or intra- abdominal fat – lies out of reach, beneath the firm wall of your abdomen and wrapped around your internal organs. This is the dangerous kind. “Abdominal fat is mechanistically linked with a number of conditions, but is also a marker for them,” says Dr James King, a senior lecturer in exercise physiology at the University of Loughborough.
“This includes Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and various cancers.” In general, men have more abdominal fat than women – though post-menopause, women increasingly store.