Abstract
An excess of visceral fat causes arteriosclerotic diseases through various cytokines. In order to properly conduct health guidance to the students of normal BMI but with a high body fat ratio, or “hidden obesity", we aimed to elucidate underlying living factors behind “hidden obesity" with use of the InBody equipment which can predict the amounts of visceral fat. Measurements including a body fat ratio with InBody, abdominal circumference, BMI, and a level of visceral obesity were made together with the questionnaire survey on their life style for 40 students at the Food Science Department. Subjects were divided into 4 groups for further analyses according to their body fat ratio: overweight, hidden obesity, normal, and thin. As a result, hidden obesity has been observed in 29% of students with the normal BMI limits. Hidden obesity group showed significantly higher level of visceral fat, abdominal circumference, and BMI than the normal group, and showed a tendency of lower amounts of muscles. They also exhibited less amounts of exercise from an elementary school up to now. With regard to the food factor, the hidden obesity group showed higher frequency of taking fruits, and the overweight group showed higher tendency to have meats and eggs. In physical symptoms, the overweight group and the hidden obesity group showed higher tendency to complain shoulder stiffness and headaches. The overweight group was significantly more affected by sleep disorder than the hidden obesity group. There was no other life style factor to distinguish between hidden obesity and normal groups than exercise factor, which may probably due to smaller number of the sample size.
