Where a person stores body fat may be more important for heart disease risk than how big they are, a new study shows. Doctors have long wondered why some obese people look metabolically normal; that is, they have normal cholesterol, blood sugar, and insulin levels, while others are insulin resistant, have high blood sugar, and high cholesterol -- a profile that puts them at high risk of heart disease and type 2 diabetes. Visceral fat, or fat that’s stored around the internal organs, has been thought to play a role in that difference. Waist size is a rough measure for the amount of visceral fat a person has. But newer studies have suggested that visceral fat may not deserve all the blame.
