Abdominal Fat Tied to Heart Attack, Chest Pain Risk
 (New York, Reuters Health, 5/30/02)

According to Dr. Hanna-Maaria Lakka of the University of Kuopio in Finland and colleagues who studied 1346 healthy Finnish men for 10 years, subjects with the greatest fat deposits around their waists (as measured by a waist-to-hip ratio) were more likely to have heart attacks than those who carried fat on other parts of their bodies. They also noted that "abdominal obesity" was strongest for men who smoked and were generally unfit.