Visceral Belly Fat & How To Lose It
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Visceral Belly Fat & How To Lose It
We’ve talked before about how waist circumference is a much more useful indicator of metabolic health than BMI.
So, let’s say you’ve a bit more around the middle than you’d like, but it stubbornly stays there. What’s going on underneath what you can see, why is it going on, and how can you get it to change?
What is visceral fat?
First, let’s talk about subcutaneous fat. That’s the fat directly under your skin. Women usually have more than men, and that’s perfectly healthy (up to a point); it’s supposed to be that way. We (women) will tend to accumulate this mostly in places such as our breasts, hips, and butt, and work outwards from there. Men will tend to put it on more to the belly and face.
Side-note: if you’re undergoing (untreated) menopause, the changes in your hormone levels will tend to result in more subcutaneous fat to the belly and face too. That’s normal, and/but normal is not always good, and treatment options are great (with hormone replacement therapy, HRT, topping the list).
Visceral fat (also called visceral adipose tissue), on the other hand, is the fat of the viscera—the internal organs of the abdomen.
So, this is fat that goes under your abdominal muscles—you can’t squeeze this (directly).
So what can we do?
Famously “you can’t do spot reduction” (lose fat from a particular part of your body by focusing exercises on that area), but that’s about subcutaneous fat. There are things you can do that will reduce your visceral fat in particular.
Some of these advices you may think “that’s just good advice for losing fat in general” and it is, yes. But these are things that have the biggest impact on visceral fat.
Cut alcohol use
This is the biggie. By numerous mechanisms, some of which we’ve talked about before, alcohol causes weight gain in general yes, but especially for visceral fat.
Get better sleep
You might think that hitting the gym is most important, but this one ranks higher. Yes, you can trim visceral fat without leaving your bed (and even without getting athletic in bed, for that matter). Not convinced?
- Here’s a study of 101 people looking at sleep quality and abdominal adiposity
- Oh, and here’s a meta-analysis with 56,000 people (finding the same thing), in case that one study didn’t convince you.
So, the verdict is clear: you snooze, you lose (visceral fat)!
Tweak your diet
You don’t have to do a complete overhaul (unless you want to), but a few changes can make a big difference, especially:
- Getting more fiber (this is the biggie when it comes to diet)
- Eating less sugar (not really a surprise, but relevant to mention)
- Eat whole foods (skip the highly processed stuff)
If you’d like to learn more and enjoy videos, here’s an informative one to get you going!
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Creatine’s Brain Benefits Increase With Age
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Creatine is generally thought of as a body-building supplement, and for most young people, that’s all it is. But with extra years come extra advantages, and creatine starts to confer cognitive benefits. Dr. Brad Stanfield shares the science:
What the science says
Although 95% of creatine is stored in muscles, 5% is found in the brain, where it helps produce energy needed for brain processes (and that’s a lot of energy—about 20% of our body’s metabolic base rate is accounted for by our brain).
In this video, Dr. Stanfield shares studies showing creatine improving memory, especially in older adults—and also in vegetarians/vegans, since creatine is found in meat (just like in our own bodies, which are also made of meat) and not in plants. On the meta-analysis level, a systematic review concluded that creatine supplementation indeed improves memory, with stronger effects observed in older adults.
Dr. Stanfield also addresses the safety concerns about creatine, which, on balance, are not actually supported by the science (of course, always consult your own doctor to be sure, as your case could vary).
As for dosage, 5g/day is recommended. For more on all of this plus links to the studies cited, enjoy:
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Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
Creatine: Very Different For Young & Old People
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Seasonal Affective Disorder (Beyond Sunlight!)
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For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, the time of increasing darkness is upon us again. Depending on our latitude, the sun barely rises before it skitters off again. And depending on other factors of our geography, we might not get much sun during that time (writer’s example: the ancient bog from which I write has been surrounded by fog for two weeks now).
So, what to do about it?
Firstly, we can make the most of whatever sun we do get (especially in the morning, if possible), and we can of course make some use of artificial sunlight. To save doubling up, we’ll link to what we previously wrote about optimizing both of those things:
‘Tis To Season To Be SAD-Savvy
More ways to get serotonin
Sunlight, of course, triggers our bodies to make serotonin, and hence we often make less of it during winter. But, there are other ways to get serotonin too, and one of the best ways is spending time in nature. Yes, even if the weather is gloomy, provided there are still visible green things and you are seeing them, it will promote serotonin production.
Of course, it may not be the season for picnics, but a morning walk through a local park or other green space is ideal.
On which note, gardening remains a good activity. Not a lot of people do so much gardening after a certain point in the year, but in one way, it’s more important than ever to get some soil under your fingernails:
There are bacteria in soil (specifically: Mycobacterium vaccae) that work similarly to antidepressants.
When something is described as having an effect similar to antidepressants, it’s usually hyperbole. In this case, it’s medicine, and literally works directly on the serotonergic system (as do many, but not all, antidepressants).
See also: Antidepressants: Personalization Is Key!
While many antidepressants are selective serotonin uptake inhibitors (i.e., they slow the rate at which your brain loses serotonin), Mycobacterium vaccae increases the rate at which you produce serotonin. So, you feel happier, more relaxed, while also feeling more energized.
^this one’s a mouse study, but we’re including it because it covers exactly how it works in the brain, which is something that the ethics board wouldn’t let them do on humans, due to the need for slicing the brains up for examination.
As to how to benefit: touching soil will get you “infected” by the bacteria, yes, even if you wash your hands later. Growing food in the soil and eating the good (including if you wash and cook it) is even better.
Boost the other “happiness chemicals”
Serotonin is just one “happiness hormone”, other feel-good neurotransmitters that are just as important include dopamine and oxytocin.
Dopamine is most associated with being the “reward chemical”, so it pays to do things that you find rewarding. If you’re stuck for ideas, engaging in small acts of kindness is a sure-fire way to get dopamine flowing and lift your own mood as well as theirs.
See also: 10 Ways To Naturally Boost Dopamine
Oxytocin, meanwhile is the “cuddle chemical”, and can be triggered even if you have nobody to cuddle*. If you do, by the way, make it at least 20–30 seconds, as that’s generally how long it takes to get oxytocin flowing.
*Vividly imagining it has much the same effect, since the brain can’t tell the difference. Alternatively, looking at pictures/videos (your choice) of small cute animals tends to work for most people also.
For more on these things, check out: Neurotransmitter Cheatsheet
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Tastes from our past can spark memories, trigger pain or boost wellbeing. Here’s how to embrace food nostalgia
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Have you ever tried to bring back fond memories by eating or drinking something unique to that time and place?
It could be a Pina Colada that recalls an island holiday? Or a steaming bowl of pho just like the one you had in Vietnam? Perhaps eating a favourite dish reminds you of a lost loved one – like the sticky date pudding Nanna used to make?
If you have, you have tapped into food-evoked nostalgia.
As researchers, we are exploring how eating and drinking certain things from your past may be important for your mood and mental health.
Halfpoint/Shutterstock Bittersweet longing
First named in 1688 by Swiss medical student, Johannes Hoffer, nostalgia is that bittersweet, sentimental longing for the past. It is experienced universally across different cultures and lifespans from childhood into older age.
But nostalgia does not just involve positive or happy memories – we can also experience nostalgia for sad and unhappy moments in our lives.
In the short and long term, nostalgia can positively impact our health by improving mood and wellbeing, fostering social connection and increasing quality of life. It can also trigger feelings of loneliness or meaninglessness.
We can use nostalgia to turn around a negative mood or enhance our sense of self, meaning and positivity.
Research suggests nostalgia alters activity in the brain regions associated with reward processing – the same areas involved when we seek and receive things we like. This could explain the positive feelings it can bring.
Nostalgia can also increase feelings of loneliness and sadness, particularly if the memories highlight dissatisfaction, grieving, loss, or wistful feelings for the past. This is likely due to activation of brain areas such as the amygdala, responsible for processing emotions and the prefrontal cortex that helps us integrate feelings and memories and regulate emotion.
How to get back there
There are several ways we can trigger or tap into nostalgia.
Conversations with family and friends who have shared experiences, unique objects like photos, and smells can transport us back to old times or places. So can a favourite song or old TV show, reunions with former classmates, even social media posts and anniversaries.
What we eat and drink can trigger food-evoked nostalgia. For instance, when we think of something as “comfort food”, there are likely elements of nostalgia at play.
Foods you found comforting as a child can evoke memories of being cared for and nurtured by loved ones. The form of these foods and the stories we tell about them may have been handed down through generations.
Food-evoked nostalgia can be very powerful because it engages multiple senses: taste, smell, texture, sight and sound. The sense of smell is closely linked to the limbic system in the brain responsible for emotion and memory making food-related memories particularly vivid and emotionally charged.
But, food-evoked nostalgia can also give rise to negative memories, such as of being forced to eat a certain vegetable you disliked as a child, or a food eaten during a sad moment like a loved ones funeral. Understanding why these foods evoke negative memories could help us process and overcome some of our adult food aversions. Encountering these foods in a positive light may help us reframe the memory associated with them.
Just like mum used to make. Food might remind you of the special care you received as a child. Galina Kovalenko/Shutterstock What people told us about food and nostalgia
Recently we interviewed eight Australians and asked them about their experiences with food-evoked nostalgia and the influence on their mood. We wanted to find out whether they experienced food-evoked nostalgia and if so, what foods triggered pleasant and unpleasant memories and feelings for them.
They reported they could use foods that were linked to times in their past to manipulate and influence their mood. Common foods they described as particularly nostalgia triggering were homemade meals, foods from school camp, cultural and ethnic foods, childhood favourites, comfort foods, special treats and snacks they were allowed as children, and holiday or celebration foods. One participant commented:
I guess part of this nostalgia is maybe […] The healing qualities that food has in mental wellbeing. I think food heals for us.
Another explained
I feel really happy, and I guess fortunate to have these kinds of foods that I can turn to, and they have these memories, and I love the feeling of nostalgia and reminiscing and things that remind me of good times.
Yorkshire pudding? Don’t mind if I do. Rigsbyphoto/Shutterstock Understanding food-evoked nostalgia is valuable because it provides us with an insight into how our sensory experiences and emotions intertwine with our memories and identity. While we know a lot about how food triggers nostalgic memories, there is still much to learn about the specific brain areas involved and the differences in food-evoked nostalgia in different cultures.
In the future we may be able to use the science behind food-evoked nostalgia to help people experiencing dementia to tap into lost memories or in psychological therapy to help people reframe negative experiences.
So, if you are ever feeling a little down and want to improve your mood, consider turning to one of your favourite comfort foods that remind you of home, your loved ones or a holiday long ago. Transporting yourself back to those times could help turn things around.
Megan Lee, Senior Teaching Fellow, Psychology, Bond University; Doug Angus, Assistant Professor of Psychology, Bond University, and Kate Simpson, Sessional academic, Bond University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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When Carbs, Proteins, & Fats Switch Metabolic Roles
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Strange Things Happening In The Islets Of Langerhans
It is generally known and widely accepted that carbs have the biggest effect on blood sugar levels (and thus insulin response), fats less so, and protein least of all.
And yet, there was a groundbreaking study published yesterday which found:
❝Glucose is the well-known driver of insulin, but we were surprised to see such high variability, with some individuals showing a strong response to proteins, and others to fats, which had never been characterized before.
Insulin plays a major role in human health, in everything from diabetes, where it is too low*, to obesity, weight gain and even some forms of cancer, where it is too high.
These findings lay the groundwork for personalized nutrition that could transform how we treat and manage a range of conditions.❞
*saying ”too low” here is potentially misleading without clarification; yes, Type 1 Diabetics will have too little [endogenous] insulin (because the pancreas is at war with itself and thus isn’t producing useful quantities of insulin, if any). Type 2, however, is more a case of acquired insulin insensitivity, because of having too much at once too often, thus the body stops listening to it, “boy who cried wolf”-style, and the pancreas also starts to get fatigued from producing so much insulin that’s often getting ignored, and does eventually produce less and less while needing more and more insulin to get the same response, so it can be legitimately said “there’s not enough”, but that’s more of a subjective outcome than an objective cause.
Back to the study itself, though…
What they found, and how they found it
Researchers took pancreatic islets from 140 heterogenous donors (varied in age and sex; ostensibly mostly non-diabetic donors, but they acknowledge type 2 diabetes could potentially have gone undiagnosed in some donors*) and tested cell cultures from each with various carbs, proteins, and fats.
They found the expected results in most of the cases, but around 9% responded more strongly to the fats than the carbs (even more strongly than to glucose specifically), and even more surprisingly 8% responded more strongly to the proteins.
*there were also some known type 2 diabetics amongst the donors; as expected, those had a poor insulin response to glucose, but their insulin response to proteins and fats were largely unaffected.
What this means
While this is, in essence, a pilot study (the researchers called for larger and more varied studies, as well as in vivo human studies), the implications so far are important:
It appears that, for a minority of people, a lot of (generally considered very good) antidiabetic advice may not be working in the way previously understood. They’re going to (for example) put fat on their carbs to reduce the blood sugar spike, which will technically still work, but the insulin response is going to be briefly spiked anyway, because of the fats, which very insulin response is what will lower the blood sugars.
In practical terms, there’s not a lot we can do about this at home just yet—even continuous glucose monitors won’t tell us precisely, because they’re monitoring glucose, not the insulin response. We could probably measure everything and do some math and work out what our insulin response has been like based on the pace of change in blood sugar levels (which won’t decrease without insulin to allow such), but even that is at best grounds for a hypothesis for now.
Hopefully, more publicly-available tests will be developed soon, enabling us all to know our “insulin response type” per the proteome predictors discovered in this study, rather than having to just blindly bet on it being “normal”.
Ironically, this very response may have hidden itself for a while—if taking fats raised insulin response without raising blood sugar levels, then if blood sugar levels are the only thing being measured, all we’ll see is “took fats at dinner; blood sugars returned to normal more quickly than when taking carbs without fats”.
You can read the study in full here:
Proteomic predictors of individualized nutrient-specific insulin secretion in health and disease
Want to know more about blood sugar management?
You might like to catch up on:
- 10 Ways To Balance Your Blood Sugars
- Track Your Blood Sugars For Better Personalized Health
- How To Turn Back The Clock On Insulin Resistance
Take care!
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Exercises for Aging-Ankles
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Can Ankles Deterioration be Stopped?
As we all know (or have experienced!), Ankle mobility deteriorates with age.
We’re here to argue that it’s not all doom and gloom!
(In fact, we’ve written about keeping our feet, and associated body parts, healthy here).
This video by “Livinleggings” (below) provides a great argument that yes, ankle deterioration can be stopped, or even reversed. It’s a must-watch for anyone from yoga enthusiasts to gym warriors who might be unknowingly crippling their ankle-health.
How We Can Prioritise Our Ankles
Poor ankle flexibility isn’t just an inconvenience – it’s a direct route to knee issues, hip hiccups, and back pain. More importantly, ankle strength is a core component of building overall mobility.
With 12 muscles in the ankle, it can be overwhelming to work out which to strengthen – and how. But fear not, we can prioritise three of the twelve: the calf duo (gastrocnemius and soleus) and the shin’s main muscle, the tibialis anterior.
The first step is to test yourself! A simple wall test reveals any hidden truths about your ankle flexibility. Go to the 1:55 point in the video to see how it’s done.
If you can’t do it, you’ve got work to be done.
If you read the book we recommended on great functional exercises for seniors, then you may already be familiar with some super ankle exercises.
Otherwise, these four ankle exercises are a great starting point:
How did you find that video? If you’ve discovered any great videos yourself that you’d like to share with fellow 10almonds readers, then please do email them to us!
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Is Unnoticed Environmental Mold Harming Your Health?
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Environmental mold can be a lot more than just the famously toxic black mold that sometimes makes the headlines, and many kinds you might not notice, but it can colonizes your sinuses and gut just the same:
Breaking the mold
Around 25% of homes in North America are estimated to have mold, though the actual number is likely to be higher, affecting both older and new homes. For that matter, mold can grow in unexpected areas, like inside air conditioning units, even in dry regions.
If mold just sat where it is minding its own business, it might not be so bad, but instead they release their spores, which are de facto airborne mycotoxins, which can colonize places like the sinuses or gut, causing significant health issues.
Not everyone in the same household is affected the same way by mold due to genetic differences and varying pre-existing health conditions. But as a general rule of thumb, mold inflames the brain, nerves, gut, and skin, and can negatively impact the vagal nerve, which is linked to the gut-brain connection. Mycotoxins also damage mitochondria, leading to symptoms like fatigue, brain fog, and cognitive issues. To complicate matters further, mold illness can mimic other conditions like anxiety, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, IBS, and more, making it difficult to diagnose.
Testing is possible, though they all have limitations, e.g:
- Home testing: testing the home for mold spores and mycotoxins is crucial for effective treatment; professional mold remediation companies are a good idea (to do a thorough job of cleaning, without also breathing in half the mold while cleaning it).
- Mold allergy testing: mold allergy testing (IgE testing or skin tests) is often used, but it doesn’t diagnose mold-related illnesses linked to severe symptoms like fatigue or neurodegeneration.
- Serum antibody testing: tests for immune reactions (IgG) to mycotoxins may not always show positive results if the immune system is weakened by long-term exposure.
- Urine mycotoxin testing: urine tests can detect mycotoxins in the body, though are likely to be more expensive, being probably not covered by public health in Canada or insurance in the US.
- Organic acid testing: this urine test can indicate mold colonization in areas like the sinuses or gut. Again, cost/availability may vary, though.
For more information on all of this, enjoy:
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