Obesity v Type 2 Diabetes

The Link Between Obesity, Visceral Fat, and Type 2 Diabetes

Being overweight or obese increases your risk for a group of medical conditions that are collectively referred to as obesity-related health issues. This includes major health risks such as heart disease, stroke, and even certain types of cancer. One of the most common forms of obesity related disease is type-2 diabetes. The frequency with which this health concern, most frequently associated with being overweight or obese, is diagnosed has increased dramatically in recent years.

Understanding Type-2 Diabetes

Type-2 diabetes is a complex disease that is associated with the body’s inability to regulate insulin. People who have diabetes are not able to use the insulin in their body correctly, and this causes blood sugar levels to rise higher than normal. The rise in blood sugar may be associated with either the body cells becoming desensitized to the action of insulin, or the inability of the pancreas to produce enough insulin or a combination of both causes.  Regardless of the case, the high blood glucose common in diabetics is responsible for serious tissue and organ damage that may be fatal.

Weight loss is found to be one of the most effective methods of treatment for regulating type-2 diabetes as people who are highly overweight or obese are more likely to experience difficulty with this insulin production and blood sugar regulation. Researchers have long been looking for a more exact understanding as to what it is about weight loss that positively influences insulin levels and recently a team of researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have made a potential breakthrough, linking visceral fat explicitly to the body’s ability to control insulin levels.

Visceral Fat and Type-2 Diabetes

Visceral fat is the type of fat that develops around the core of the body, including stomach fat. Visceral fat is sometimes called “deep fat” due to the fact that it sits deep in the abdominal tissue, much deeper than the subcutaneous fat. Visceral fat takes a gel-like form and actually wraps itself around major organs, including the kidneys, pancreas and liver.

It is because of the way that visceral fat wraps itself around your organs that it poses such a threat to your overall health and wellbeing. As the researchers at University of Illinois at Chicago found, the formation of this type of fat greatly increases your risk of developing metabolic disease and interferes with the body’s ability to control insulin levels efficiently.

Of course, there are ways to lose visceral fat, just as there are ways to lose any type of fat. Working with your weight loss surgeon can help you lose visceral fat and reduce your risk of developing type-2 diabetes.