Visceral fat
You want it lower. It is the depot that matters most metabolically and the one a waist tape only approximates; the trials that count image it directly.
In depth
Visceral adipose tissue — the fat packed around the abdominal organs, the metabolically active depot that drives insulin resistance and inflammation.
What drives it
Beta-3 receptor signaling reduces it.
Chronic treatment of lean and obese rats with the selective beta3-adrenergic agonist CL 316,243 reduced the weight of retroperitoneal (intra-abdominal) white adipose tissue and shrank white adipocytes relative to untreated controls. doi 10.2147/DDDT.S73891
What it drives
It reduces Insulin sensitivity.
Pooling observational studies, visceral fat mass showed the strongest correlation with HOMA-IR of any fat depot or anthropometric measure (r = 0.570, 95% CI 0.424-0.687), ahead of total fat, BMI and waist circumference, so greater visceral fat tracks with lower insulin sensitivity. doi 10.1038/srep18495 · PMID 26686961
It increases Calms inflamed fat tissue.
Macrophage content of perigonadal, perirenal and mesenteric (visceral) fat rose in proportion to adipocyte size and body mass, and these recruited macrophages were the dominant source of adipose TNF-alpha, iNOS and IL-6, establishing that expanding visceral fat drives adipose tissue inflammation. doi 10.1172/JCI19246 · PMID 14679176
Blends that modulate it
Each blend page names this pathway and carries the study behind its claim.
See it on the map
Open the causal map to follow this pathway upstream and downstream, arrow by arrow, each with its study.