What are the many forms of abdominal fat?

 It's natural to have some tummy fat. Fats, after all, shield and insulate your body.

Having a lot of belly fat, on the other hand, might be harmful to your health and raise your chance of acquiring chronic diseases. As a result, maintaining a healthy level of total body fat, including belly fat, might be advantageous.

This article explains the different forms of belly fat and offers evidence-based advice on how to get rid of it.

What are the many forms of abdominal fat?

Only a little quantity of fat is found in your belly compared to the rest of your body (1Trusted Source).

One form of belly fat is located beneath your skin, while the other is situated deeper within your abdomen, around your internal organs.

Belly fat under the skin

Subcutaneous fat, also known as subcutaneous adipose tissue (SAT), is fat located under the skin (2Trusted Source).

The fat you perceive as “jiggling” on your belly is subcutaneous fat, which is soft. Women have a higher percentage of subcutaneous fat than males (3Trusted Source).

Subcutaneous fat, unlike fat located deeper in the abdominal cavity, isn't as closely connected to illness risk (3Trusted Source).

Having too much body fat, especially total belly fat, might raise your chance of acquiring chronic illnesses including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and some malignancies (1Trusted Source, 4Trusted Source, 5Trusted Source, 6Trusted Source).

Maintaining appropriate amounts of belly fat and total body fat, on the other hand, may assist you to avoid acquiring a chronic condition.

Belly fat that is visceral

The fat that surrounds internal organs like your kidneys, liver, and pancreas, known as visceral adipose tissue (VAT), or visceral belly fat, is considerably deeper in your abdomen than subcutaneous fat. This is what is known as "harmful" abdominal fat.

Visceral fat is considerably more metabolically active than subcutaneous fat. Compared to subcutaneous fat, this form of fat has more cells, blood vessels, and nerves (7Trusted Source).

Increased resistance to the hormone insulin, which regulates blood sugar levels, is closely connected to visceral fat. Insulin resistance can result in high blood sugar levels and the development of type 2 diabetes over time (8Trusted Source).

Visceral fat can also cause systemic inflammation, which might increase your illness risk (9Trusted Source, 10Trusted Source, 11Trusted Source, 12Trusted Source).

Because males are more prone than women to collect visceral fat, they are more likely to have an "apple-shaped" physique as their belly fat accumulates. Women, on the other hand, are more prone to gain extra fat in their lower bodies, resulting in a "pear" form (3Trusted Source).

The distribution of body fat varies with age, which is interesting. Premenopausal women, for example, have more subcutaneous belly fat, but postmenopausal women have more visceral fat, which relates to an increased risk of metabolic illness (2Trusted Source).

Furthermore, visceral fat is more prevalent in Europeans than in persons of other races (2Trusted Source).