> Studies have shown that visceral fat, which is fat that surrounds the internal organs in the abdominal area, is associated with chronic diseases like heart disease and diabetes, while subcutaneous fat, which is located directly under the skin, is not as strongly associated.
How does one determine if one has an excess of visceral fat?
A DXA (DEXA) scan will quantify visceral fat for you. This is a non-invasive scan which uses a low-dose x-ray. Most cities have some sort of sports medicine facility where you can get one. It's typically not covered by health insurance but fairly cheap to pay out of pocket.
whats wild is there are people who look very fat - who have lots of subcutaneous fat, who don't have visceral fat. The excessive subcutaneous fat can be hard on your joints but doesn't seem to correlate to other health issues.
I agree it’s a great starting point for the daily check. But it’s not a good answer to a specific explicit request to measure visceral fat imo. And there’s a lot of confusion in these comments about how much they actually correlate.
If you use the waist measurement to compute your waist to height ratio and it's above 0.5, then you know you almost certainly have too much, and losing weight is the next action.
How does one determine if one has an excess of visceral fat?