Which of these can help you better determine your risk for heart disease? 

1. Scale
2. Tape Measure

Answer: B

The tape measure will help you better determine your risk for heart disease.

Understanding your waist to hip ratio helps you determine your overall health risk. Studies show a direct relationship between waist size and early indications of heart disease, regardless of the patients’ overall weight. 

Why? Because a larger waist size may lead to high blood pressure, blood clotting, high LDL cholesterol, and insulin resistance—a precursor to diabetes. What is it that has health professionals so worried? The answer is "visceral fat", a type of body fat that is located around the organs in the abdominal area, deep beneath the surface of your skin where it can reside largely unnoticed. Too much visceral fat can increase your risk of heart and other serious diseases. You can use the tape measure to check your waist to hip measurements. 

Here are a few helpful resources you may find interesting…. 

Learn how to measure your waist to hip ratio with a tape measure – Flash demonstration

Tape measure, not scale, key to knowing heart risk – CNN article

Know your numbers