About gall stones

Article From Today’s Compuserve News Desk:
Entitled: Bet You Didn’t Know This About Belly Fat
Women: No matter how much you weigh, those rolls of belly fat increase the
likelihood you will have to undergo gallbladder surgery. And women who have the
largest waist circumferences run twice the risk of surgery, compared with
women who have the smallest waists, reports Reuters Health of new research from
the University of Kentucky Medical Center in Lexington.
Led by Dr. C-J Tsai, the research team analyzed data on 42,312 women who
participated in the long-running Nurses’ Health Study. All were between the ages
of 39 and 66 and did not have gallstone disease at the start of the study in
1986. When the women enrolled in the study, their waist and hip measurements
were recorded.
Fast forward to the year 2000. By then 3,127 of the study participants had
had their gallbladders removed due to gallstones, reports Reuters Health. After
the researchers adjusted for risk factors for gallbladder disease, they

determined that women whose waist circumference was greater than 36 inches were
96
percent more likely to undergo gallbladder surgery than were women whose waists
measured less than 26 inches. Waist-to-hip ratio was directly associated with
risk no matter the overall body mass index. For example, those with a ratio
of 0.86 or greater had a 39 percent higher risk of gallbladder removal than
women with a ratio of 0.70 or less. The study findings were reported in the
medical journal Gut.