Having a big potbelly is bad for cholesterol, and this could explain why, when it comes to body shapes, pears are better than apples, according to a study published Thursday.
"When patients come in, we advise them to lose weight," said Dr. Richard E. Ostlund Jr. "This paper suggests that more important than that is how the fat is distributed."Researchers have long noticed that folks with big spare tires tend to have an especially high risk of heart trouble, but the reason was unclear. Ostlund's study, in New England Journal of Medicine, suggests that people with beefy hips and trim waists have higher levels of a protective form of cholesterol called HDL than do those with potbellies and small behinds.
The study of healthy elderly people, conducted at Washington University School of Medicine, found that body shape alone could account for a large portion of the differences in people's HDL cholesterol levels.
HDL - high density lipoprotein - is the so-called good cholesterol. The more people have in their blood, the lower their chances of heart attacks. Women typically have higher HDL levels than men. As they grow older, women also tend to put on weight around the hips, while men are more prone to growing big tummies.
Doctors have long suspected that differences in sex hormones might explain the HDL disparity between men and women. However, the new study suggests that body shape, not sex, could be the key factor. It found that pear-shaped men tend to have high HDL, while apple-shaped women have lower HDL.