Is your shirt collar a little too tight? Well, your thick neck can spell trouble for your heart in the future, researchers say.

A thick neck can mean high cholesterol
Doctors have long measured fat in the gut -- visceral adipose tissue -- to help assess the risk of cardiovascular disease. But fat in the neck is closely associated with the known factors for heart trouble, such as cholesterol levels and diabetes, said a report using data on 3,320 offspring of the study's original participants.

Measure the neck too
The standard ways to assess obesity is to measure the waistline and determine body-mass index. But neck fatness could add to the risk assessment a physician makes by measuring the waistline.
Neck circumference was associated with cardiometabolic risk factors, even after adjustment for visceral adipose tissue, the researchers are reported to have said.

"Upper-body subcutaneous adipose tissue and visceral adipose tissue independently contribute to cardiometabolic risk," they reported.

Dr Gregg C. Fonarow, a professor of medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, said the researchers had "done a really good job of looking past the conventional measurements of risk."

"This is another way by which clinicians can assess the degree of adiposity of patients as a measure of cardiovascular risk and make recommendations about reducing risk," he said.

You've got to lose it
Carrying too much fat is not good for the heart, no matter where in the body the fat happens to be.
"It is just another insight into how much adipose tissue there is," Fonarow said. "When you measure waist circumference, you look at visceral fat in the abdomen. Here you're looking at visceral fat in another area of the body."

Apple-shaped bodies more at risk
Dr Kirk Garratt, director of interventional cardiovascular research at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York said, "The obese body comes in two forms: pear-shaped, with most of the excess weight around the hips; and apple-shaped, with most of the weight in the upper part of the body. People with most of the weight in the upper part of the body have more cardiovascular disease. "It appears to be that certain kinds of metabolic abnormalities contribute to the atherothrombotic risk."

But no matter where the excess fat is located, it's best to lose it. People with a body-mass index over 25 have increased risk of coronary events.


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