What Are Love Handles?
By PositiveMed-Team
Edited By: Stephanie Dawson

Love handle is an informal term used to describe excess fat at the sides of the waistline. Its also known as abdominal obesity or muffin top. They come up when layers of excessive subcutaneous fat accumulate over the stomach and abdominal area. They can be fixed using various exercises.
Researchers started analyzing this area of medical science in the 1980s and found that love handles or abdominal fat have a vital connection with many chronic diseases.
There are numerous health hazards of love handles and excess abdominal fat is partly responsible for heart disease and hypertension.

• Diabetes

A number of theories have found a direct relationship between diabetes and love handles. Deposits of fat in the central part of the body predispose us to insulin resistance. Its also responsible for secreting hormones known as adipokines which impair glucose tolerance resulting in possible diabetes.

• Asthma

Studies have shown an association between love handles and asthma. People who have higher belly fat content take frequent and small breathes resulting in lower volumes of air entering the body, this low air volume breathing tightens muscles and narrows the airway. People with love handles have more chances of being hospitalized. Statistics show that more than 75% of people who were admitted to hospitals for asthma were either overweight or had love handles.

• Alzheimer’s disease

Studies show that vascular and metabolic disorders, potential causes of Alzheimer’s disease, are related to abdominal obesity. Logistic regression analysis has shown that love handles and beer belly increase the risk of Alzheimer’s disease by more than 9 times.

Women are more likely to develop love handles than men, that doesn’t mean men don’t get them.

Love handles are not something that can’t be cured or treated. A routine of abdominal exercises with a healthy diet can avoid and prevent love handles. A study conducted in 2006 has shown that cardiovascular exercise when coupled with resistance training becomes more effective in treating love handles than cardiovascular training alone.

The trick to getting rid of love handles is reducing the amount of calories we ingest in our daily life.