HEALTH NEWS

Waist to Height Ratio – Is your Stomach Too Large?

By Byron J. Richards, Board Certified Clinical Nutritionist

June 27, 2008

Waist to Height Ratio – Is your Stomach Too Large?
A new simple way to judge waistline size and health has emerged that applies to children, adults, and either sex. The goal is to keep your waist size to less than ½ your height. Just figure out your height in inches and divide by two.

A recent study looking into children using this simple measurement found that those children whose waist lines surpassed this measurement had significant clusters of cardiovascular disease1 risk factors.

Waistline is an accurate low tech method of assessing your true health – the measurement does not lie. The longer you are in a higher than desirable waist measurement the more you are accumulating tissue damage reflective of disease risk and accelerated aging. If you are headed back in the right direction you change some of this so that you reduce the accumulation of damage, but you still need to reach a waist size that is less than ½ your height.

Of course, you can do better than this measurement and the flatter your stomach the better. However, this simple test is as good as any high tech diagnostic tools and other lab tests as a reliable indicator of true cardiovascular disease risk – as it is reflective of the “make or break point” that signifies the seriousness of extra weight.

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