More than half of adults in the nation aged from 40 to 64 have an oversized waist that could indicate higher visceral fat and increased risk of metabolic syndrome, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday.
It teamed up with the Taiwan Millennium Health Foundation to hold a news conference in Taipei to raise public awareness about the correlation between waist size and the risk of certain diseases.
National nutrition and health surveys that it conducted between 2014 and last year showed that 51.2 percent of the people in that age range have a waist measurement that is too large and 28.7 percent were overweight, meaning they had a body mass index (BMI) of more than 24 and less than 27, HPA said.
Abdominal obesity is defined as having a waist circumference of more than 90cm for men and more than 80cm for women, HPA said.
Such people face an increased risk of metabolic syndrome, which can lead to heart disease, diabetes and kidney damage, it said.
One example cited by the agency was a 55-year-old man, surnamed Liu (劉), who was proud of his big belly, as he believed it symbolized wealth and good fortune, but after losing conciousness about a month before his daughter’s wedding, doctors discovered that he had suffered a transient ischemic attack or mini-stroke.
A HPA survey conducted last year found that 49.9 percent of respondents aged from 40 to 64 had not measured their waist in the past six months and 16.3 percent had not measured their blood pressure in the past year.
Only 27.7 percent of respondents who were overweight regularly checked their weight, the survey found.
The risk of hypertension increases for both genders as waist size increases, said foundation chairman Wu Chih-hsing (吳至行), a physician at National Cheng Kung University Hospital.
People should get into the habit of regularly taking their waist and blood pressure measurements, he said.
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