Men with big beer bellies likely to have weaker bones: study (USA)

Men with excessive fat around their abdomen, commonly known as a "beer belly," are at an elevated risk for heart disease and Type 2 diabetes, and now researchers are adding osteoporosis to the list of potential hazards. More than 37 million American men over age 20 are obese, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. While obesity is associated with a host of other health problems - hypertension, high cholesterol, asthma, sleep apnea and joint diseases - it has been widely accepted that overweight men were at a lower risk for bone loss. "Not true," said Dr. Miriam Bredella, a radiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and an associate professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School. "Everyone thinks of osteoporosis as a disease of women. Studies all focused on women, and men were always thought to be fine. We specifically wanted to look at young men." Bredella and her team of researchers evaluated 35 obese men with a mean age of 34 and a mean body mass index, a measure of body fat, of 36.5. The men were divided into two groups: one with mainly subcutaneous fat, which lies just beneath the skin and is spread all over the body, and the other with mostly visceral or intra-abdominal fat, located deep under the muscle tissue in the abdominal cavity