APPLES, PEARS and HEART DISEASE

How Having an Apple or a Pear Body Shape
Determines Your Future Health

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Are you an apple or a pear? Most women understand intuitively whether their bodies tend to store fat around their waists (forming an apple shape) or lower down around their hips, thighs, and buttocks (forming a pear shape). But few of us understand the dramatic impact body shape has on our current health and risk of future disease. Every aspect of a woman's life is affected by her shape, including her ability to lose weight, her fertility, severity of menopausal symptoms, response to birth control pills and hormone replacement, emotional volatility, body image, and long-term risks of breast cancer, diabetes, osteoporosis and heart disease.

Distribution of body fat appears to be an important determinant of risk, not just in adults but in children as well. Think of it as having an "apple shape" versus a "pear shape."  An apple shape means the bulk of fat is distributed around the abdomen. This shape, also called "central obesity," is associated with a higher risk of heart disease, as well as risk factors such as diabetes, high cholesterol, low HDL cholesterol (the "good" cholesterol), and high blood pressure. 

Pear-shaped persons, who carry more fat in the hip and thighs, appear to be at less risk for these conditions. Although genetics plays a major role in determining body shape, gender and age are also important factors. For example, women typically collect fat on their hips and buttocks, giving them a "pear" shape, while men generally collect weigh around the belly, giving them an "apple" shape.
Determining your body shape can be used as a predictor for risk of diseases related to obesity, like diabetes and coronary artery disease, but a more precise method of calculating your degree of risk is by measuring your waist to hip ratio by dividing your waist measurement by your hip measurement. Women with waist-to-hip ratios of more than 0.8 or men with waist-to-hip ratios of more than 1.0 are "apples" and are at increased health risk due to their fat distribution.

According to researchers, a larger waist size was found to be harmful; it is not healthy to carry fat around the middle. Generally, the closer the fat is stored near the heart, the more dangerous it is for long-term health, whereas larger hip size - possibly indicating lower-body muscle mass - was protective.  Fat stored around the waist is more likely to affect lipids in the blood and clog up arteries than fat stored around the thighs and hips. In other words, apple-shaped people are more at risk of heart problems than those who are pear-shaped. Pears aren't completely out of the woods though. They can become apples later in life if they don't control their weight.
Measuring your waist is another way to check whether your have too much fat around the middle. For example, in women, central obesity is signaled by a waist circumference of about 35+ inches, while in men the danger waist measurement is 40+ inches.

 The bottom line, however, is that unlucky genetics and bad childhood habits aside, the majority of heart disease is preventable. Individuals can reduce their chance of developing these and other types of heart disease by exercising regularly, maintaining healthy eating habits and weight, avoiding tobacco use, and monitoring cholesterol and blood pressure levels but ultimately apples have to make the effort to shed their mid-waist cushioning.

Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States and the Bahamas, claiming hundreds of thousands of lives each year. During the month of February which is recognized worldwide as National Heart Month, healthcare professionals renew their commitment to fighting cardiovascular disease by increasing public awareness of this deadly disease and understanding of how it can be prevented.   

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