A nasty question to face up to - this is a column from the Time's always useful Health and Wellness section. The simple test is included in the excerpt below the link.
A. Visceral fat is fat that collects around the abdomen — giving a “beach ball” look in some cases — and is associated with a host of medical problems, including heart disease, diabetes, heartburn and sleep difficulties.
No one knows precisely when fat becomes dangerous, said Dr. Noyan Gokce, a staff cardiologist at the Boston University School of Medicine, who has a federal grant to investigate the differences between “healthy” and “unhealthy” fat. But fat seems to behave differently when pushed close to organs such as the kidney, liver and pancreas, he said.
Most of the health problems we associate with fat are strongly linked with visceral fat, which in many people seems to accumulate with age, said Dr. Michael Jensen, a professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and a past president of the Obesity Society, a professional group.
******
Although the definitive test for visceral fat is a CT or other specialized scan, a waist circumference of more than 35 inches in women and more than 40 in men indicates an unhealthy amount of visceral fat, said Dr. Apovian, an obesity medicine specialist at the Boston University School of Medicine.
Interestingly, in one 2010 study in which researchers removed visceral fat with surgery, there was no improvement in the test subject’s health, Dr. Apovian said. The findings suggest that the only useful way of losing visceral fat is through diet and exercise. “I can’t explain that fully,” she said.’’
Comments