Bad news for buddha bellies today: A new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that having a large waistline can almost double your risk of dying prematurely even if your body mass index (BMI) is within the ‘normal’ range.

The study also showed that the ratio of waist to hips is also an important indicator of health. Lower waist-hip ratios indicate that the waist is comparatively small in relation to the hips. The ratio is calculated by dividing the waist measurement by the hip measurement.

This is good news for you data crunchers out there. Professor Elio Riboli, the European coordinator of the study, said:

…you don’t need to take an expensive test and wait ages for the result to assess this aspect of your health – it costs virtually nothing to measure your waist and hip size. Doctors and nurses can easily identify people who need to take certain steps to improve their health by routinely monitoring these measurements. If you have a large waist, you probably need to increase the amount of exercise you do every day, avoid excessive alcohol consumption and improve your diet. This could make a huge difference in reducing your risk of an early death.

A similar study published earlier this year also shows that women who carry excess fat around their waists were at greater risk of dying early from cancer or heart disease than were women with smaller waistlines, even if they were of normal weight.

A large waist can almost double your risk of premature death, says huge Europe-wide study

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