Higher waist, hip measures may add up to greater risk for heart attack

Higher waist, hip measures may add up to greater risk for heart attack

This study suggests that the differences in the quantity and distribution of fat tissue not only results in differences in body shape between women and men, but may also have differential implications for the risk of heart attack in later life, researchers noted.

“Our findings support the notion that having proportionally more fat around the abdomen (a characteristic of the apple shape) appears to be more hazardous than more visceral fat, which is generally stored around the hips (ie, the pear shape),” said lead author Sanne Peters, PhD, research fellow in epidemiology at George Institute for Global Health at University of Oxford in the United Kingdom.