Visceral fat

How do you know if you are progressing towards chronic disease? The simplest, most concrete biomarker is visceral fat.

What is visceral fat?

Visceral fat refers to adipose tissue deposited around the organs.

It is unique in its physiological properties compared to other forms of fat tissue e.g.  brown adipose tissue (heat generation for cold adaptation) or subcutaneous adipose tissue (metabolically 'safe' energy storage).

Why should I care about visceral fat?

Visceral fat is metabolically active, releasing pro-inflammatory factors that drive disease-causing processes like hypertension, insulin resistance and endothelial dysfunction.

Carrying visceral fat, and maintaining the lifestyle that caused its development, puts you on the path to diabetes, cancer, heart disease, vascular disease, dementia, chronic kidney disease and nursing home residence.

Check out the following CT images from  Chris Stadherr, MD, family medicine physician from Washingon State, USA, shows two men with very different amounts of visceral adipose tissue.

The gentleman on the left has minimal visceral fat. Notice how his abdominal wall is straight, and there is minimal black colour within his abdomen and around his intestines.

The gentleman on the right has type II diabetes, and highly advanced visceral fat, even while also having minimal subcutaenous fat. Note how his abdominal wall is distended, blown out, by the pressure of the fat inside. There is extensive black fat within the abdomen and his musles are shrunken and themselves infiltrated by fat. 

Bad news about Visceral fat

• Radiologists do not report it on routine CT, Ultrasound or MRI scans! It so common it is ‘unremarkable’, despite the harm its doing to you.
• You can be carrying Visceral fat with ‘normal’ blood tests - and most do. CT/MRI with interpretation by a trained physician is gold standard to identify visceral fat.
• Damage of visceral fat is related not only to amount you carry, but also the amount of time you have carried it. Longer visceral fat has existed, the more damage it has done and the more difficult (but certainly not impossible) to remove. 

Good news about Visceral fat

• You can reverse your visceral fat with strategic lifestyle changes. By doing so, you drastically reduce your long term chronic disease risk. 
• If you have had CT or MRI performed for another reason, the images can be reviewed to establish your visceral fat baseline.

What to do about your Visceral fat

• Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is the gold standard for identifying visceral fat in a dedicated scan. MRI provides the highest resolution images without exposing you to ionising radiation (like CT or Xray). I will be shortly launching a visceral fat reversal service including dedicated scans for identifying visceral fat and its elimination over time.
• The long term metabolic damage of visceral fat can be biochemically identified through certain blood tests - fasting insulin, fasting glucose and HbA1c key among them. To discuss your metabolic health with Dr Max, request a review of historic imaging, book a consult below or get in contact.

Learn more

The following videos contain more information about visceral fat, how to identify it, and how to eliminate it. 

• My interview with Chris Stadherr, MD, a deep dive on the role of visceral fat and exact factors that exacerbate it, and how to reverse it. 
• My second interview with Dr Sean O'Mara on using MRI imaging for visceral fat
• My interview with Dr Ankur Verma, Indian emergency physician on true underlying causes of heart disease, including visceral fat.
• My interview with Laszlo Boros, PhD on the link between deuterium intake and visceral fat deposition. 
• My presentation 'Identifying and Eliminating Visceral Fat for Optimal Health' - at REGENERATE Albury summit 2023.

More images of visceral fat

CT abdomen, fat appears black. LEFT, axial image showing extensive visceral fat in the abdomen & surrounding kidneys. RIGHT, coronal image visceral fat causing the abdomen to distend.