Interestingly, particularly young people come to me with the problem of not being satisfied with the shape of their stomach, although they are not eating too much and do exercise, they wish for shredded and flat abdomen. Most people have a smaller or larger “tummy” which, in extreme cases, can impede their breath, sex life or their ability to sit on a bus, airplane, or to clean themselves. Is it a genetic, aesthetic or medical problem?
Ripped abdomen or tummy?
Problems concerning the shape of the abdomen does not belong to any medical field.
In the field of medicine gastroenterology deals with the digestive system, but shaping the abdomen is not the task of the gastroenterologist. He rather examines the processes in the digestive system and ignores the fact that the digestive system may also change the shape of the abdomen. The sport doctor deals with the abdominal muscles, but with a big belly he wouldn’t get any result, only with sumo players at most… The subject of cardiologists is “abdominal obesity” but they also consider only the negative consequences of increased abdominal circumference.
Big belly = diseases, problems
However, most of who has big belly tend to face illnesses later, and if we look around, we rarely see “normal” abdominal form, but mostly only “pathological”, while deeply, we crave for a fit, ripped abdomen. If there was a separate profession, like “bellyology” or “tummyology”, it could count with a very high patient number….But for the time being, most people don’t even realize that their tummy fat is pathological. They deceive themselves by saying that tummy is a symbol of maturity, and with that growing belly is a natural phenomena with the aging process.
The shape of the belly
The shape of the belly is one of the most important and best indicator of the health of our body, before the illnesses would develop. It is therefore worthwhile to observe the shape of the abdomen and act to influence it positively.
The packs are the parts of the continuously growing straight stomach muscle, which are dependent upon not only continuous training, but also on the type of diet, the amount of waste material that accumulates in the body, the individual sensitivity to food and of course on our genes.
How the flat stomach from childhood becomes a grown belly later?
Abdominal transformation is the result of changes in the bowel tissue around the intestine (and not just fat deposition or weak muscles). According to the style of the eating, the intestine may retain its original shape or expand, collapse, bloat, become inflamed rigid (similar to a water-filled rubber hose), and later become loosely hanging in the abdominal space.
These deformations affect the tissues covering the abdomen from front, and also the abdominal muscles, in a way, that the expert can determine how he or she eats, what mistakes he makes and what gastrointestinal diseases he has. Lower belly expansion indicates slow bowel movement and stagnant faeces. The belly which pushes the ribs at the top indicates gasification, food-intolerance, bad intestinal flora, poor diet. Uncontrolled eating does not allow for a six pack or even flat stomach. Bloating is caused by food intolerance and / or bad intestinal flora, but ultimately both are dependent on our diet. Because meals determine the shape of the belly, every bite counts.
Fat tissue, water
In addition, the shape of the belly can depend on the fat tissue deposited in the abdominal tissues, on the oedema accumulated in it, on the weakening of the abdominal muscle, but also depend on posture and the shape and pains of the spine. An expanded, protruding, bone straining belly is not suitable for developing a ripped abdomen without diet and detoxifying cure, no matter how much sit ups they do.
The picture shows the normal and different abnormal abdomens:
- Normal belly.
- Oblique belly, which means that the left side is smaller than the right side, mostly because jejunum is hypertonic and ileum is hypotonic.
- Boat belly.
- Gasbelly.
- Faecesbelly.
- Gas-faecesbelly.
- Fatbelly.
According to Mayr…
According to Mayr, a normal, flexible bowel will harden and swell first due to incorrect eating, and will be like a watering hose filled with water. Later, after lots of inflammations the swelling goes down, the tissues become flabby and start hanging, and the bowels expand. Slag builds up in it and stores the faeces continuously. Such an abdominal shape carries the flaccid, sagging intestine shape and is impossible to alter or make it ripped with just muscle-strengthening exercises. The loosened connective tissue does not fully recover its elasticity.
The Mayr Diagnostics
Mayr diagnostics is still unknown in Hungary in medical and natural medicine circles. However, its extremely simple, device-free implementation and approach would allow naturopaths and physicians to quickly become aware of the patient’s general condition. Its findings are extremely important and provide information that cannot be replaced.
Dr. Franz Xaver Mayr (1875-1965), an Austrian physician and researcher, was one of the greatest physical physicians in the twentieth century. He had been ahead of his colleagues in light-years for his discoveries of salutogenesis (health-based medicine), he knew thoroughly preventive medicine, and when pathology begins in the body, when reversible pathologies become irreversible. Doctor Mayr, without a medical history, told his patient exactly what his problem was after 20 minutes of examination. Similar to Ayurveda’s thousands of years of experience, he also thought, that all pathologies start from the gut and if we want to change this, we need to heal the digestive system with soothing cure. That’s why in Karls – where he ran his medical institution, considered to be the Mecca of gastrointestinal patients – he developed the intensive diet used successfully by hundreds of thousands since then, and abdominal treatments. Although part of the patients coming from all over the world did not complain of digestive problems, everyone had to take his diet and get the Mayr treatments. He found that the vast majority of patients improved, even if their disease appeared to be non-digestive.
Mayr Cure
Taking into consideration the nowadays so common milk and grain protein sensitivity, the poor quality bakery products available in the baking industry, I further improved the Mayr cure and created a diet that keeps the basic principles (chewing, training of digestive juices, simple gentle diet), but a modified version that does not cause any intolerance. This diet trains the selection of digestive juices, the muscles of the digestive system, the mucous membrane and gives hope that the flaccid and sagging intestines will regain their tone.
The medical opinion about grown tummy
Professional literature calls grown tummy central obesity. There is a close parallel between central obesity and cardiovascular complications, so much that even cardiovascular risk is higher of people with normal weight but with tummyfat, and approaches cardiovascular complications similar to total obesity.
Insulin resistance, diabetes, stroke
Central obesity, along with insulin resistance, hypertension, high blood fat, is classified in the category of metabolic syndrome, which are closely related to each other. So, whoever has a grown tummy, will be increasingly prone to blood pressure problems, to blood fat disorders and insulin resistance, to diabetes, to stroke and also heart attack. According to other studies, those who are involved in metabolic syndrome (in our case the ones with tummy fat) will be prone to infertility, asthma and to other respiratory diseases and to chronic inflammations too, to PCOS, or polycystic ovary syndrome. Tummy fat is also associated with osteoporosis, dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, and colon cancer. Professional literature also states that BMI alone is not enough to assess the risk of cardiometabolic and organ tissue fattening, but it is also necessary to measure the abdominal circumference. The medical literature continues to sign high calorie foods, high fat intake, snacking, overeating and regular alcohol consumption as the cause of abdominal growth. Alcohol (for example regular beer drinking) causes tummy because it increases the load on the liver which is thus unable to convert fats properly and because of altering the balance of hormones, it causes extreme hunger, which generates additional obesity. We know from the studies of American Wake Forest University, that the consumption of trans fats (biscuits, chips, margarine, fried foods and semi-finished foods) increases the redistribution of fats in our body, which practically means that fats from other parts of the body will be transferred to the abdominal area.
The process of growing a belly
Now we know from medical discoveries, from the traditions of natural medicine Ayurveda and Doctor Mayr, that the shape of the abdomen has a big significance in the diagnosis of diseases, in the appearance of diseases and in their healing tendencies. The digestive system has a key role, which is usually the first step of changing the shape of the tummy. The intestine first becomes inflamed, then inelastic, underfunctioning, and then expands and hangs. The intestinal flora can become rotting, gas-producing, fermented, overgrown or decayed, fungal. The intestinal wall first thickens, then breaks down and becomes permeable. The immune system in the intestinal wall weakens, fat, protein, slag deposits between the intestines which can cause inflammations, can become edematous and the stomach begins to live its independent life. Now it’s not the muscle and skin that covers the abdominal wall and not the size and movement of the intestines are the determining factors, but the growth and changes of the omentums that are covering and staying in between the abdomen and intestines, that are determining the shape and feel of the abdomen. The tummy widens and then it widens the ribs too, the curves of the ribs change which can be measured well by certain manual tests. The navel and its surroundings are transformed: certain indentations disappear from next to the abdomen and the abdominal blocks no longer can form. In bad cases stretch marks appear on the skin, like in the process of pregnant tummy growth.
The shape of the abdomen is closely related to certain cardiovascular and other diseases, according to the leading publications in the conventional literature. At the same time, other physical signs are also closely related to abdominal changes, such as color of the skin, changes in skin surface, skin tone, hair condition (not a coincidence that so many overweights complain of hair loss), nail condition, changes in the mucous membrane of the eyes, tongue deposition or discoloration, change of its surface, bad breath. In addition, the competent physician may observe many signs to monitor the onset of the disease process: the walking of the patient, posture, grip of his hand, its temperature and its dryness etc. However, let us return to the shape of the abdomen. The frequently large abdomen is the consequence of obesity only in minor cases, most people will have a large belly because of the loss of tone, dilated, intoxicated, or inflamed intestines and the inflamed connective tissue around them.
What does a doctor who deals with stomachs see when examining a patient with large belly?
We observe the breathing of the patient. Normally abdominal breathing dominates. When someone is doing mainly chest breathing, he’s doing so, because the abdominal organs are inflamed and that is how he tries to soothe them.
We observe the shape and relief of the abdomen. Normally the ribs are approximately meet at a 30º of angle, when this angle opens, then abnormal abdominal processes are common. Normally there is a U indentation on the abdomen to close the small intestine and a depression to the midline navel due to the normal abdominal vacuum effect. If these depressions disappear or widen, this indicates an abnormal, pathological process.
We measure the size, volume of the abdomen in many ways, the volume of the small intestine, the different distances between the navel and the ribs, the pubic bone, because they all change when the abdomen is distorted. Changes in the abdomen also change the shape of the chest, which we also examine. We measure the length of the neck. This is because as the abdomen grows, the curvature of the spine changes and shortens the neck. We measure the distance between the shoulder blades, the curvatures of the spine, the examination of the abdominal and muscular tone has a great importance.
Just as a drooped flower can stand upright as it receives water and improves its tone, likewise the human intestinal system affects the skin tone and vitality. With the appearance of waste products, first hypertonia, which is the narrowing of lumen in the gastrointestinal tract, increased bowel movement, overproduction of glandular juices occurs. Later though, hypotonia can occur, which means dilatations, bowel weakness, decreased digestive fluid production. Atony is the final stage of the disease, which is no longer reversible (irreversible).
Read the most important from the belly!
Do not doubt, tummy fat means disease, not health! Whoever has a tummy, no matter what shape, must take urgent action to prevent health issues. There is a reversible and irreversible stage. Try to take the necessary steps to eliminate obesity as soon as possible. However, there is a chance in all stages to restore a better health and better form.
Let’s get your belly sorted!
Of course the restoring of every tummy or belly shape requires a personalised, custom program. In spite of this, it can be a general rule to eat vegetables, fruits, legumes, mushrooms, rice in moderation. Do not consume white bread, white pasta, sweets. Only consume very little meat, dairy products, and rarely. Always be modest, the shredded belly will not tolerate frequent violations. If you already have big belly, it should be restored with decontaminating liquid fasting and a long-term diet. This process can take several years and requires a lot of patience and perseverance during the implementation of the program. Green tea, blueberries and soy, are beneficial to burn belly fat faster.
The supplementation of missing vitamins may be needed. The whole program is recommended to be assembled by the help of a person who is familiar with the above processes. You need to train constantly along a professional program that may require a personal trainer.
I tell you the most important: those who has lean abdomen usually has healthier digestive systems than the average. Lucky ones can still have a shredded abdomen, but if it is not, more possible health is always available, and the reduction of tummy size increases our health potential.
Source: My article from Naturopath magazine
