THIS Test Predicts Heart Attack and Stroke

How likely are you to have a heart attack or stroke?

According to the established risk models, the biggest tells are your weight and body mass index (BMI).

But researchers, utilizing artificial intelligence, have identified a much more accurate way of predicting your risk of having a heart attack or stroke…

…and it has nothing to do with your BMI.

Two people can have the same BMI but look entirely different—with vastly different proportions of muscle and fat.

That difference doesn’t just impact the way you look… it impacts your health risks, too.

Researchers looked at 33,000 abdominal CT scans. They specifically looked at the L3 CT slice of the scan, and then calculated body composition areas. Then they were divided into groups based on subcutaneous fat, visceral fat, and skeletal muscle area.

Over the next five years, more than 12,000 people had a heart attack or stroke.

Based on all this information, the researchers determined that BMI was not associated with future risk of heart attack or stroke.

Instead, the single biggest risk factor for having a heart attack was the area of visceral fat.

Belly fat.

Even when accounting for other risk factors, the people with the most visceral fat had the highest risk of heart attack and stroke, while those with the lowest amount of belly fat were protected from stroke in the following years.

This was an important study, since it showed that precise measures of abdominal fat outperform traditional markers for predicting cardiovascular risk.

When it comes to the risks of being overweight, it’s not just about HOW MUCH fat you have on your body… but WHERE that fat is located.

And time and again, studies have shown that belly fat is the worst kind.

Intermittent fasting is one way to lose belly fat.  It means not eating for a designated amount of time each day.

You could do a 12-hour window, 16-hour window, or more.

The details are up to you. I prefer a 16-hour window, and I don’t eat after dark.