Associations of Waist-to-Height Ratio with Various Emotional and Irregular Eating, and Making Environment to Promote Eating in Japanese Adults: The Saku Cohort Study
Adiposity is a serious public health concern, causing many lifestyle diseases such as hypertension, dyslipidemia, hyperuricemia, and type 2 diabetes.
A recent World Health Organization (WHO) report indicated that, worldwide,
34% of adult men and 35% of adult women aged 20 years or above were overweight
and that 10% of men and 14% of women were obese.
In Japan, the prevalence of obesity and/or overweight was lower than the WHO’s report;
however, the prevalence has increased in all age groups of men aged ≥20 years and
in middle-aged women over the last 2 or 3 decades.
3,4 While the prevalence of obese or overweight women has slightly decreased, the prevalence of obese or
overweight men has remained unchanged for almost a decade.
A widely used measure to determine adiposity is the body mass index, calculated
by height and weight. However, this measure does not distinguish between fat mass and
lean mass, or capture distribution of body fat.
Recently, positive associations between abdominal obesity and cardiovascular disease
risk factors such as hypertension, type 2 diabetes,8 and plasma lipids
have been reported.
Waist circumference is a simple and frequently used measurement for estimating
abdominal obesity. However, there is disagreement as to whether the degree of
cardiovascular disease risk may differ by height, in cases with similar WCs.
Therefore, a waist-to-height ratio, or WC divided by
height, has been proposed. Many studies comparing the WHtR
and other adiposity measures such as BMI or WC as a predictor
of cardiovascular disease have been conducted, and a systematic
review of 78 studies concluded that the WHtR and WC were
stronger predictors than BMI.
Diabetes Res Open J. 2017; 3(2): 20- 30. doi: 10.17140/DROJ-3-132