Liver cancer is the sixth most common type of cancer worldwide, and your waist size may affect your risk of liver cancer regardless of whether you are at a healthy weight, according to a new study.

A healthy waist size is no more than 94 cm (37”) for men and 80 cm (32”) for women. Read morehere.

In technical terms, the circumference of your waist (WC) is associated with the risk of liver cancer beyond your body mass index (BMI). This is because the size of your waist is a measure of central obesity or abdominal obesity.

After pooling data on more than 2.5 million people from five articles all published between 2013 and 2019, the researchers reported that every 5cm increase in waist size was linked to a 13 per cent higher risk of liver cancer.

With its poor survival rate, scientists have been looking for something to give us a clue about liver cancer – it has almost no symptoms so doesn’t get diagnosed until in an advanced stage. Now it seems it’s your waist. We already know that non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and the more severe non-alcoholic steatohepatitis are both risk factors for later liver cancer.

Bottom line: try not to gain excess weight or waist.