Research published this week suggests that the circumference of someone’s belly is a better indication of whether or not that person is at risk of stroke than body mass index (BMI). The study was carried out by Dr Yaroslav Winter from the University of Heidelberg in Germany and was published on Friday 14th August in the journal Stroke. Previous studies carried out on stroke risk have already suggested that the circumference of someone’s waist is a better indicator or risk from cardiovascular disease than a person’s body mass index.
The study was carried put on 379 adults who had suffered a stroke or a transient ischemic attack (TIA) also known as a mini stroke. A TIA occurs when there is a temporary interruption of the body’s supply of blood to part of the brain and will often be a precursor to a stroke, which is defined as a permanent disruption of the blood supply to a particular part of the brain.
The 379 adults who had suffered a stroke or a TIA were compared to 758 adults of the same sex and age who lived in the same region in Germany. The researchers then measured obesity, body mass index, the waist to hip ratio of all the participants, waist circumference and the waist to height ratio. The last three measurements are used by scientists to calculate abdominal fat. The scientists discovered that the participants with bigger waists (which they defined as more than forty inches for men and more than thirty five inches for women) had four times the risk of having a stroke or a TIA when compared with the participants who had a smaller waist size. They also discovered that those people with the biggest waist-to-hip ratio had nearly eight times as much chance of having a stroke or a TIA than those with normal waist sizes. While there was a link between BMI and the risk of stroke and TIA the scientists found that these were not significant when they removed risk factors such as lack of exercise, smoking, blood pressure and diabetes.
People living in the UK might have seen the posters for the recent campaign alerting people to the health risks that are indicated by having a large waist circumference. The scientists urged people to take exercise and to try to stick to a Mediterranean diet containing fish and olive oil to lower their risk of having a stroke or developing heart disease.