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What Your Body Shape Reveals About Your Health

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Are you an apple? A pear? Or maybe a ruler? Discovering your body shape is more than one of those silly online quizzes. Understanding your body shape could help you find the most effective workout and, according to many studies, help improve your health.

There are so many factors that can determine our body shape: genetics, lifestyle, sex and age. Some people can eat fried foods and junk every day but never gain weight. Some people tend to accumulate weight around the hip, others on the belly.

Based on the overall fat distribution in your body, most people can fall into these body shape categories:

  • Apple
  • Pear
  • Hourglass
  • Inverted Triangle
  • Ruler

What matters most is not what you are shaped like, but what that shape means for your health and how you can better manage your lifestyle to stay healthy.

Apple Shape

Health Risks

Abdominal obesity is probably the most dangerous of all, and apple body shape is considered at the highest risk for health issues compared to the other body types. Larger waists can mean higher risk of heart disease. It can also mean higher risk of Type 2 diabetes. If you are apple-shaped but not overweight –– meaning your body mass index (BMI) is under 25 — you are still at higher risk for cardiovascular disease, cancer and diabetes than people with smaller waists.

Why can fat around your waist create so much trouble? Different from the fat in other parts of the body, fat on the abdominal area is like an iceberg.

Here’s why belly fat causes so many problems:

  • It grows deep within your abdominal cavity and fills the space between organs.
  • Belly fat has stronger influence on your metabolism. It releases fatty acids and substances into the blood through the nearby vein that is connected with liver.
  • This can cause metabolic syndrome that can reduce production from the pancreas.
  • The result is your blood sugar stays high and you’re at risk for diabetes.

In addition, the fatty cells can trigger inflammatory response that releases a substance called cytokines. This substance is a cause behind heart disease.

 

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