Big Waist Raises Risk of Diabetes, Analysis Suggests

Larger waist size, rather than traditional factors such as obesity, is the major reason why the United States has a higher diabetes rate than England, researchers say. The new findings offer more proof that excess fat around the mid-section is a health risk and suggest that studies of type 2 diabetes should focus on waist size along with traditional risk factors, said the American and British researchers.
Diabetes occurs in about 16 % of American men, 14 percent of American women, and 11 percent and 7 percent of men and women in England, correspondingly, the study authors renowned in a news release from the RAND Corp., a nonprofit research organization.
When the researchers analyzed studies about the health and lifestyles of people in the United States and England, they found no association among higher diabetes rates in the United States and conventional risk factors such as age, smoking, socioeconomic status, or body mass index (the height and weight ratio used to measure overweight and obesity).
"Americans carry more fat approximately their middle sections than the English, and that was the single factor that explained most of the higher rates of diabetes seen in the United States, Specially among American women. Waist size is the missing new risk factor we should be studying," study co-author James P. Smith, corporate chair of economics at the RAND Corp., said in the news release.