• Cardio and high-intensity interval training can melt harmful visceral fat, according to a new meta-analysis published in published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings.
  • Visceral fat is more dangerous than other kinds of fat, since it can increase your risk of developing diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.

Your regular ride might be just the prescription your health needs: Research shows that exercise can help melt away the dangerous fat around your internal organs as effectively as medication meant to do the same can, according to a recent meta-analysis published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings.

Researchers looked at 17 previously-published studies including more than 3,600 participants to determine whether exercise or pharmacological therapy was more effective at reducing visceral adipose tissue (VAT), more commonly known as the harmful belly fat that nestles around your internal abdominal organs.

For a study be included in the analysis, the exercise could include aerobic exercise, resistance training (weight lifting), or both-as long as the intervention lasted at least six months. Pharmacology treatment included use of certain meds that are FDA-approved or have been previously approved for weight loss, including some diabetes and heart disease drugs, for that same duration.

“When we analyzed all the trial data together, we found that exercise interventions were associated with a greater relative reduction in visceral fat compared with pharmacological interventions,” said senior study author Ian Neeland, M.D., an assistant professor of internal medicine at UT Southwestern Medical Center.

That means more of the total fat lost in those in the exercise groups was the harmful visceral kind.

Researchers believe that exercise triggers the release of a signaling protein called interleukin-6 (IL-6), which is important for regulation of energy metabolism and involved in the breakdown of fat. A separate meta-analysis found that blocking IL-6 with an antibody reduces the fat-reducing benefits of exercise, while the presence of IL-6 led to exercise-related visceral fat loss.

And losing visceral fat is important-doing so can reduce your risk of developing diabetes, heart disease, and cancer, according to Neeland. Researchers believe the fat can up your risk of these kinds of conditions by increasing the volume of blood circulating and releasing inflammatory proteins, which can clog your arteries and up your risk of heart disease.

“Exercise is cheaper than medications and just, if not more, effective for [reducing] visceral fat,” Neeland said. “This is a clear first choice.”

To do this, Neeland suggests following the American Heart Association’s recommendation for 150 minutes a week of moderate-intensity exercise. To more effectively melt visceral fat, try incorporating a high-intensity interval training (HIIT) routine rather than just endurance training. This may be due to the fact that the body’s metabolism responds to interval training differently than to endurance work, according to Neeland. Research has found that HIIT is more effective than cardio at burning visceral fat.