The belief that you gain weight when you stop smoking is often used as an argument to justify postponing the decision to give up cigarettes. But a new study has crossed this excuse off the list of potential ex-smokers. Researchers at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, delved into the results of several different genetic studies, involving a total of more than a million people, and concluded that smoking, on the contrary, increases abdominal fat, especially the deepest fat, visceral fat. , which is linked to a higher risk of heart disease, diabetes, stroke and dementia.
What the researchers tried to understand was whether those who have genes associated with smoking tend to have a different body fat distribution than non-smokers. And they concluded that yes, with special relevance to the greater amount of visceral fat, the type of fat that accumulates around the organs, and not subcutaneous fat, which is located immediately beneath the skin.
This finding is particularly relevant because this type of fat is not so easily detected, as a person “without a belly” can have a harmful amount of visceral fat.
The study, published in the journal Addiction, explains that smokers may have a lower weight than non-smokers, but they tend to have more abdominal and visceral fat, which leads the authors to talk about “smoking to be thin”. .
Previous studies have linked nicotine to suppressed appetite and increased metabolism.
Tags: Dont stop smoking fear gaining weight Science links tobacco increased abdominal fat
