Adipose tissue is probably the most demonized tissue in the human body,
despite it being essential for life as we know it.
But as the saying goes, too much of a good thing can quickly become a bad thing.
And in today's video,
with the help of the cadavers here in the lab,
we're going to see the point in which that happens,
which is unfortunately, probably a whole lot earlier than you think it is.
We'll discuss the various locations that adipose tissue can be stored
in the body, as well as how it can be measured
in both a clinical setting and in the comfort of your own home.
It's going to be an important one.
Let's do this.
There are two primary types of body
fat, subcutaneous fat and visceral fat.
Subcutaneous fat is found in the hypodermis,
which is just deep to the skin or the epidermis and the dermis.
It's made up of both white and brown adipose tissue, with brown
having some pretty incredible thermogenic properties
that we will be discussing in a future video, And white
being primarily for energy storage as well as insulation.
Visceral fat, on the other hand, is found inside
and surrounding the internal organs of the body.
It helps to protect the organs as well as to store and provide energy
for them to use.
When it comes to measuring an individual's overall body composition,
there are a variety of methods out there, such as skinfold calipers,
which pinch the subcutaneous fat in order to take a measurement.
Hydrostatic weighing, which is where an individual
is submerged in the water and then has to forcefully exhale
all the air from their respiratory system while simultaneously being weighed. ..
sounds like a blast, I'm sure.
Then you have bioelectrical impedance, which takes advantage of the fact
that electricity moves differently through water than it does fat.
A weak electrical current is sent through the feet,
and sometimes the hands — it kind of just depends on what scale you have.
And depending on the speed in which the current travels through the body,
it can help determine hydration levels as well as body fat percentages.
You also have what's called a DEXA scan, which stands for Dual-Energy
X-Ray Absorptiometry, which is a mouthful to say,
but it's actually designed to measure bone density and diagnose osteoporosis.
But it's very useful as well at determining body fat percentages.
But it does come with small doses of radiation,
which is why some individuals prefer to just use an MRI,
which is also very good at quantifying overall body fat percentages.
But you also can use a CT scan, but that comes with even larger doses
of ionizing radiation.
So it really just depends on what you're looking for.
You see, these are just a few examples of the available methods.
And as you can already tell, they're going to come with their own pros and cons.
Calipers, for example, don't
measure visceral body fat, but that's not necessarily a bad thing
because those who are using calipers are using it
because they want to know how much subcutaneous fat there is.
DEXA scans, like I just mentioned, weren't designed to measure body fat.
They're about bone density, which means the numbers
they provide surrounding body fat are not 100% accurate,
which means for some individuals it's not worth the time,
the money that goes into it, as well as the small doses
of ionizing radiation that come with it.
Instead, they'd rather lean on more convenient methods such
as bioelectrical impedance, or possibly even calipers.
At the end of the day, it really comes down to two questions —
“What do you want to know?” and “why do you want to know it?”
Are you a bodybuilder
looking to find the ins and outs of your own personal fat deposition?
Are you into longevity and just looking to accumulate
as much data as possible so you can live as long as possible?
Are you a postmenopausal woman that's worried about osteoporosis
or are you overweight and you just want to know
how much fat you have and where it's located?
Depending on the individual and the situation,
some of these methods make a whole lot more sense than others.
But in my personal opinion, and this is just my personal opinion,
I believe everyone should at least know their BMI.
Now, the BMI, which stands for Body Mass Index, gets a ton of flak
from health and wellness professionals because there are numerous ways
that it can be misleading.
But let's just put that aside for a moment.
BMI is the most commonly used metric for determining height,
weight, proportionality.
Or another way I could say that is are you underweight,
normal weight, overweight or obese?
To figure out your BMI,
you simply divide your weight in kilograms by your height in meters.
Or you can just look online because there are plenty of free
BMI calculators that don't require you to do math, which is always awesome,
but you'll end up with a number that can then fit within specific ranges.
So anything under 18.5 is considered “underweight”.
Between 18.6 and 24.9 is considered “normal weight”.
Anything between 25 and 29.9
is “overweight”, and anything 30 or above is considered “obese”
with even multiple levels of obesity beyond that.
For me, I'm five foot eight inches or 1.72 meters, and I weigh 164 pounds
or 74.4 kilograms as of this morning,
which gives me a BMI of 24.9,
which is the exact upper limit of what's considered to be a “normal weight”.
If I gain even just one more pound, I will then be shifted
into the overweight category, since my BMI will now be 25.1.
Which brings us back to the problems with BMI.
Your BMI doesn't discern between bone density,
muscle mass, fluid volume, air in your lungs, and body fat.
A bodybuilder with considerable lean muscle mass will likely appear
as “obese” on the body mass index despite that clearly not being the case.
But for 80 to 90% of the human population, the BMI is actually a relatively good
indicator of overall —
this is generally speaking — but overall health and body composition.
It's far from the best method out there, but I view its utility
in the same way that I view, say, measuring your body weight.
It's better to track something rather than nothing at all.
And if you track it over a long enough timeline, you can help determine a trend.
And then if you pair that with a good exercise routine, yearly blood panels,
a good healthy diet and other things beyond that, I mean, it'll help
give you a relatively decent understanding of where you stand healthwise.
But I want to be very clear — this is the bare minimum.
But when you compare it to how many people are tracking nothing at all,
it's pretty good, all things considered.
In a perfect world, people wouldn't track BMI as much as they'd be tracking
how much visceral and subcutaneous fat they have and pairing that information
with their yearly blood panels, exercise routine and diet, so on and so forth.
But considering that to accomplish that, you'd need a CT, MRI or DEXA scan,
I mean, it's just not all that feasible for most people out there.
So it's reasonable for them
to lean on the BMI instead to provide some kind of awareness
as to where they stand in terms of overall body composition.
But now that we know what fat is and how you can
measure it, let's discuss the point in which it becomes life threatening.
Real quick, I want to think the sponsor of today's video, Yogabody
Teachers College.
When this lab first opened, we exclusively taught in-person events
to a wide variety of students, including EMTs and paramedics,
medical assistants, dental assistants, massage therapists,
and those going through yoga teaching certification programs.
And I remember being very surprised
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which is one reason I'm so impressed with Yogabody Teachers College.
They specialize in science based, online certification programs for yoga teachers,
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You're looking at both the thoracic and abdominopelvic cavities.
And as you can see, there is a ton of organs and structures inside of them.
But when we're discussing visceral fat, what we're really talking about
is the fat that's accumulating inside of these cavities.
And you can probably already
see the problem here is that there's only so much space.
So the more visceral fat that accumulates, the worse the situation will get.
Too much visceral fat is associated with high blood pressure, kidney disease,
cancer, cardiovascular disease and metabolic syndrome.
So to put it simply, too much visceral fat can lead to a stroke, type
two diabetes, gout, high triglycerides and plenty more.
So you're probably wondering then.
Well, “how much is too much?” Everyone should have some visceral fat.
So everything you see here that is colored yellow is an example of visceral
fat and a real easy example of that is this right here.
This is called the greater omentum.
This is a fatty apron that drapes over your small intestine.
It's loaded with blood vessels, immune cells...
it’s a really cool piece of tissue.
But as I reflect that back, we can then see the small intestine.
But this is the small intestine.
You can see that it's attached to the body wall with this tissue here
called the mesentery,
and this is loaded with blood vessels that are going to take nutrients
that were flowing
through the small intestine and actually brings them into the body
and sends them to the liver in order to be cleaned.
Now, the kidneys we can't actually see because they're going to be posterior
to the peritoneum.
But by the way, this is another example of visceral fat here.
So we can't see the kidneys.
But I have a kidney right here that has a bunch of fat around it.
This is called the renal fascia.
The liver — so if we put this all back, we can see the liver right here.
The liver itself stores fat as well as glucose in the form of glycogen.
Too much fat.
You get fatty liver disease.
And even the heart.
This one surprises a lot of people.
Now, the heart right now is surrounded by a connective tissue
called the pericardium.
But if we remove that, you would see a fat capsule
on top of the myocardium of the heart itself.
Meaning, yes, even your heart has fatty tissue.
And that is so it has fatty acids that it can pull from, so it can constantly beat.
The point I'm making is that there is plenty of visceral fat
in the body for even healthy individuals.
The problem isn't having it — the problem is having too much of it.
Research suggests that the amount of visceral fat
that is inside of the body is 10% of your total body fat percentage.
So let's say you're using
a bioelectrical impedance scale at home and it tells you you have 20% body fat.
Well, 2% of that would then be visceral fat.
For people aged 20 to 39, women should be targeting
between 21 and 32% body fat.
Men should be targeting between 8 and 19% body fat.
Then for those aged 40 through 59,
women should be targeting between 23 and 33% body fat,
while men should be targeting between 11 and 21% body fat.
And this is an important point I want to make — women have higher body
fat ratios than men do, and that's because of the effect estrogens
have on the various tissues in the body, including being integral
to the whole process of fat deposition as a whole.
But I also want to point out the researchers have long known
about an association between low levels of testosterone and obesity,
but the exact mechanism behind that association is still unknown.
But it's interesting to note that males with low levels of testosterone are prone
to more visceral fat accumulation, which is what gives them that typical beer
belly shape.
In fact, measuring your waist to hip ratio is one of the easiest things
you can do at home to give you an idea of how much visceral fat you might have.
All you do
is measure the narrowest aspect of your waist, which is typically just above
the belly button, and then you're going to measure the widest aspect of your hips.
You then divide your waist circumference by your hip circumference,
which then gives you your waist to hip ratio.
Now, according to the World Health Organization, a ratio of 0.9
in males and 0.8 in females equates to less risk
for all the different conditions we mentioned earlier,
such as cardiovascular disease and metabolic syndrome.
So let's finish this up by making this crystal clear.
The exact point
in which body fat becomes life threatening is very difficult to quantify
because it depends on a
whole bunch of variables such as age, sex and even your genetics.
But generally speaking,
if your total body fat percentage is above
normal ranges, then it's very likely that your visceral fat,
which is the most dangerous type of body fat, is also in an unhealthy range.
The higher your total body fat percentage, the higher your visceral fat percentage,
the more likely you are to develop one of those life threatening conditions
such as type two diabetes, or maybe even you'll suffer a stroke.
While determining your overall body composition is not 100% accurate, easy
or cheap, tracking even basic information such as your BMI or your waist to hip
ratio can be extremely useful in determining some kind of trend
that you can then act upon with some kind of health based strategy
to attempt to bring you back into those normal ranges.
Thanks for watching everybody.
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As always, be sure to like, comment, subscribe
if you feel so inclined, and I'll see you in the next video.