Central Obesity part 1: Fighting Internal Belly Fat!

     Belly fat…Pot belly...Beer belly…Spare tire…Love handles…Buddha belly.  There are many nick names for that adipose tissue, or visceral fat, accumulating around and more importantly within your mid-section mainly in a connective tissue organ draped around your stomach called the Omentum.  And as you age it may become more difficult to stop the accumulation, never mind reduce it.  And while for men in particular, who tend to store more fat around their mid-section rather than their hips and butts, it is mostly just aesthetically unappealing, the harsh reality is that doctors, dieticians, and scientists alike now agree that your bulging belly may be a physical characteristic or even the cause of many serious health problems such as type-2 diabetes, and heart disease.

Combat OMENTUM-FAT...AKA, BELLY-FAT!!

     As I stated in part 1 of this series, many times the case is a bulging belly while all other areas of your body appear to be relatively lean, (especially in men who are approaching age 40 or over).  The general rule is that we don't spot-gain fat, and this is still the case where subcutaneous (under the skin) is concerned.  There is a place however where our body will spot-gain fat and rapidly at that, and that is within the abdomen beneath our muscles and over & around our organs, on the Omentum.  The Omentum (Greater & Lesser) is a layer of adipose (fat) tissue that drapes off the stomach and hangs down underneath the muscles and partly attaches to your transverse colon.  It serves many useful functions to include supporting your organs, storing visceral fat supplied directly from the small intestine, secreting immune-response factors to protect from peritoneal infection, binding cortisol,  it possesses regenerating stem cells, and supplying immediate fat to the liver via the Portal Vein for quick energy.  Perhaps most remarkable in its attributes, surgeons even use the omentum to patch & wrap around injuries and incisions inside peritoneal cavity.