The Scary Truth About Visceral Body Fat

adipose tissue is probably the most demonized tissue in the human body despite it being essential for Life as we know it but as the saying goes too much of a good thing can quickly become a bad thing and in today's video with the help of the cadavers here in the lab we're going to see the point in which that happens which is unfortunately probably a whole lot earlier than you think it is we'll discuss the various locations that adipose tissue can be stored in the body as well as how it can be measured in both a clinical setting and in the comfort of your own home it's going to be an important one let's do this there are two primary types of body fat subcutaneous fat and visceral fat subcutaneous fat is found in the hypodermis which is just deep to the skin or the epidermis and the dermis it's made up of both white and brown adipose tissue with brown having some pretty incredible thermogenic properties that we will be discussing in a future video and white being primarily for energy storage as well as insulation visceral fat on the other hand is found inside and surrounding the internal organs of the body it helps to protect the organs as well as to store and provide energy for them to use when it comes to measuring an individual's overall body composition there are a variety of methods out there such as skin fold calipers which pinch the subcutaneous fat in order to take a measurement hydrostatic weighing which is where an individual is submerged in the water and then has to forcefully exhale all the air from their respiratory system while simultaneously being weighed sounds like a blast I'm sure then you have bioelectrical impedance which takes advantage of the fact that electricity moves differently through water than it does fat a weak electrical current is sent through the feet and sometimes the hands kind of just depends on which scale you have and depending on the speed in which the current travels through the body it can help determine hydration levels as well as body fat percentages you also have what's called a dexa scan which stands for dual energy x-ray absorption which is a mouthful to say but it's actually designed to measure bone density and diagnose osteoporosis but it's very useful as well at determining body fat percentages but it does come with small doses of radiation which is why some individuals prefer to just use an MRI which is also very good at quantifying overall body fat percentages but you also can use a CT scan but that comes with even larger doses of ionizing radiation so it really just depends on what you're looking for you see these are just a few examples of the available methods and as you can already tell they're going to come with their own Pro pros and cons calipers for example don't measure visceral body fat but that's not necessarily a bad thing because those who are using calipers are using it because they want to know how much subcutaneous fat there is dexa scans like I just mentioned weren't designed to measure body fat they're about bone density which means the numbers they provide surrounding body fat are not 100 accurate which means for some individuals it's not worth the time the money that goes into it as well as the small doses of ionizing radiation that come with it instead they'd rather lean on more convenient methods such as bioelectrical impedance or possibly even calipers at the end of the day it really comes down to two questions what do you want to know and why do you want to know it are you a bodybuilder looking to find the ins and outs of your own personal fat deposition are you into longevity and just looking to accumulate as much data as possible so you can live as long as possible are you a post-menopausal woman that's worried about osteoporosis are you overweight and you just want to know how much fat you have and where it's located depending on the individual and the situation some of these methods make a whole lot more sense than others but in my personal opinion and this is just my personal opinion I believe everyone should at least know their BMI now the BMI which stands for body mass index gets a ton of flack from health and wellness professionals because there are numerous ways that it can be misleading but let's just put that aside for a moment BMI is the most commonly used metric for determining height weight proportionality or another way I could say that is are you underweight normal weight overweight or obese to figure out your BMI you simply divide your weight until kilograms by your height in meters or you could just look online because there are plenty of free BMI calculators that don't require you to do math which is always awesome but you'll end up with a number that can then fit within specific ranges so anything under 18.5 is considered underweight between 18.6 and 24.9 is considered normal weight anything between 25 and 29.9 is overweight and anything 30 or above is considered obese with even multiple levels of obesity beyond that for me I'm five foot eight inches or 1.72 meters and I weigh 164 pounds or 74.4 kilograms as of this morning which gives me a BMI of 24.9 which is the exact upper limit of what's considered to be a normal weight if I gain even just one more pound I will then be shifted into the overweight category since my BMI will now be 25.1 which brings us back to the problems with BMI your BMI doesn't discern between bone density muscle mass fluid volume air in your lungs and body fat a bodybuilder with considerable lean muscle mass will likely appear as obese on the body mass index despite that clearly not being the case but for 80 to 90 percent of the human population the BMI is actually a relatively good indicator of overall this is generally speaking but overall health and body composition it's far from the best method out there but I view its utility in the same way that I view say measuring your body weight it's better to track something rather than nothing at all and if you track it over a long enough timeline you can help determine a trend and then if you pair that with a good exercise routine yearly blood panels a good healthy diet and other things beyond that I mean it'll help give you a relatively decent understanding of where you stand health-wise but I want to be very clear this is the bare minimum but when you compare it to how many people are tracking nothing at all it's pretty good all things considered in a perfect world people wouldn't track BMI as much as they'd be tracking how much visceral and subcutaneous fat they have and pairing that information with their yearly blood panels exercise routine and diet so on and so forth but considering that to accomplish that you'd need a CT MRI or dexa scan I mean it's just not all that feasible for most people out there so it's reasonable for them to lean on the BMI instead to provide some kind of awareness as to where they stand in terms of overall body composition but now that we know what fat is and how you can measure it let's discuss the point in which it becomes life-threatening but real quick I want to thank the sponsor of today's video yoga body Teachers College when this lab first opened we exclusively taught in-person events to a wide variety of students including EMTs and paramedics medical assistants dental assistants massage therapists and those going through yoga teaching certification programs and I remember being very surprised just how much yoga teachers actually knew about the human body which is one reason I'm so impressed with yoga body Teachers College they specialize in science-based online certification programs for yoga teachers yoga breathing coaches yoga trapeze teachers and stretching coaches if you're interested in starting a new career or side job helping people improve their health overcome injuries manage stress or just live their best lives longer yoga body's courses might be right for you they take a science-based business positive approach to yoga helping turn passionate students into successful industry professionals since 2007 yogabody has certified over 23 000 teachers in 41 countries they're backed by yoga Alliance American Council on exercise and even American Council on education making them one of the only schools in the entire world eligible for college credits they've put together a free report for you called how to choose a yoga teacher training program and you can access it immediately at yogabody.com Iha or you can just click the link Link in the description below you're looking at both the thoracic and abdominal pelvic cavities and as you can see there is a ton of organs and structures inside of them but when we're discussing visceral fat what we're really talking about is the fat that's accumulating inside of these cavities and you can probably already see the problem here is that there's only so much space so the more visceral fat that accumulates the worse the situation will get too much visceral fat is associated with high blood pressure kidney disease cancer cardiovascular disease and metabolic syndrome so to put it simply too much visceral fat can lead to a stroke type 2 diabetes gout high triglycerides and plenty more so you're probably wondering then well how much is too much everyone should have some visceral fat so everything you see here that is colored yellow is an example of visceral fat and a real easy example of that is this right here this is called the greater omentum this is a fatty apron that drapes over your small intestine it's loaded with blood vessels immune cells it's a really cool piece of tissue but as I reflect that back we can then see the small intestine but this is the small intestine you can see that it's attached to the body wall with this tissue here called the mesentery and this is loaded with blood vessels that are going to take nutrients that were flowing through the small intestine and it actually brings them into the body and sends them to the liver in order to be cleaned now the kidneys we can't actually see because they're going to be posterior to the peritone but by the way this is another example of visceral fat here so we can't see the kidneys but I have a kidney right here that has a bunch of fat around it this is called the renal fascia the liver so if we put this all back we can see the liver right here the liver itself stores fat as well as glucose in the form of glycogen too much fat you get fatty liver disease and even the heart this one surprises a lot of people now the heart right now is surrounded by a connective tissue called the pericardium but if we remove that you would see a fat capsule on top of The myocardium of the heart itself meaning yes even your heart has fatty tissue and that is so it has fatty acids that it can pull from so it can constantly beat the point I'm making is that there is plenty of visceral fat in the body for even healthy individuals the problem isn't having it the problem is having too much of it research suggests that the amount of visceral fat that is inside of the body is 10 of your total body fat percentage so let's say you're using a bioelectrical impedance scale at home and it tells you you have 20 percent body fat well 2 percent of that would then be visceral fat for people aged 20 to 39 women should be targeted between 21 and 32 percent body fat men should be targeting between 8 and 19 body fat then for those aged 40 through 59 women should be targeting between 23 and 33 body fat while men should be targeting between 11 and 21 body fat and this is an important point I want to make women have higher body fat ratios than men do and that's because of the effect estrogens have on the various tissues in the body including being integral to the whole process of fat deposition as a whole but I also want to point out that researchers have long known about an association between low levels of testosterone and obesity but the exact mechanism behind that Association is still unknown but it's interesting to note that males with low levels of testosterone are prone to more visceral fat accumulation which is what gives them that typical beer belly shape in fact measuring your are ways to hip ratio is one of the easiest things you can do at home to give you an idea of how much visceral fat you might have all you do is measure the narrowest aspect of your waist which is typically just above the belly button and then you're going to measure the widest aspect of your hips you then divide your waist circumference by your hip circumference which then gives you your waist to hip ratio now according to the World Health Organization a ratio of 0.9 in males and 0.8 in females equates to less risk for all the different conditions we mentioned earlier such as cardiovascular disease and metabolic syndrome so let's finish this up by making this Crystal Clear the exact point in which body fat becomes life-threatening is very difficult to quantify because it depends on a whole bunch of variables such as age sex and even your genetics but generally speaking if your total body fat percentage is above normal ranges then it's very likely that your visceral fat which is is the most dangerous type of body fat is also in an unhealthy range the higher your total body fat percentage the higher your visceral fat percentage the more likely you are to develop one of those life-threatening conditions such as type 2 diabetes or maybe even you'll suffer a stroke while determining your overall body composition is not 100 accurate easy or cheap tracking even basic information such as your BMI or your waist to hip ratio can be extremely useful in determining some kind of trend that you can then act upon with some kind of health-based strategy to attempt to bring you back into those normal ranges thanks for watching everybody be sure to click the link in the description below and get your free report from yogabody Teachers College today as always be sure to like comment subscribe if you feel so inclined and I'll see in the next video [Music] foreign foreign [Music]

Channel: Institute of Human Anatomy

Views: 490,763

Keywords: institute of human anatomy, the anatomy lab, visceral fat, subcutaneous fat, subcutaneous fat vs visceral fat, visceral fat how to get rid of it, visceral fat vs subcutaneous fat how to tell, visceral fat explained, visceral fat vs subcutaneous fat, body mass index, bmi, dexa scan, skinfold calipers, bioelectrical impedance analysis, bioelectrical impedance analysis test, bioelectrical impedance scale, bioelectrical impedance test, what does overweight mean, is bmi accurate

Id: dlaZ6VZGV8o

Length: 14min 11sec (851 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 16 2023