Healthy Beauty
This article is from the WebMD Feature Archive
Quick Facts About Cankles
Cankles: It sounds like a cough. Or maybe a nice shell you'd find on the beach.
Instead, cankles are the latest fitness bug-a-boo. A slang term uniting the words calf and ankle, cankles refers to the absence of a defined indent between calf and foot. In short, thick ankles.
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So what causes cankles? Do they constitute a health problem? Can you reduce the size of your ankles through exercise? WebMD talked to the experts and got their input on this latest body fixation.
Why Do We Have Cankles?
Like dimpled thighs or a generous derriere, cankles are generally caused by one of two things -- your weight or your genes.
Thick ankles can also result from edema, an accumulation of fluids sometimes caused by kidney disease, heart failure, pregnancy or other issues, but for most of us, if we've got cankles it's because we're heavy or because we were just born that way.
The question is: Is there anything you can do about them?
Exercising Those Cankles Away
Calf raises, trampoline workouts, special jumping exercises -- lots of folks offer cankle-busting tips, and as you might imagine, many are selling something, from gym memberships to workout manuals.
Exercise is nearly always a good idea of course, no matter what the reason, but despite the wishful thinking of many a dieter, "we've known for a long time that you can't spot reduce," says Rich Weil, MEd, CDE, an exercise physiologist and certified diabetes educator.
"Body fat is body fat and it doesn't matter if it's on your ankles, thighs, hips, or belly -- all fat cells behave the same way," Weil tells WebMD. When you exercise, fat cells are triggered by adrenaline to release fat, but some cells are more stubborn than others, and that affects the pattern in which weight is lost.
"And that pattern is predetermined in your genes," says Weil, director of the New York Obesity Research Center Weight Loss Program at St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital Center and an exercise and fitness expert on WebMD's message boards. So by all means, tackle cankles with a hearty workout, but whether your ankles are going to lose fat before your thighs is strictly up to your genes.
Does Surgery Help When Exercise Won't?
If you're not overweight and you still have heavy-looking ankles, feeling the burn isn't going to do anything to slim your limbs.
For some, that's where ankle liposuction comes in. A one-hour, outpatient surgery in which fatty tissue is sucked out from under the skin, liposuction may give a svelte taper to the ankle area. Cristina Reggie, who appeared on CBS's The Early Show, raved over her liposuction surgery results. "I think it's amazing," said Reggie, "I'm looking forward to wearing dresses." Reggie says she paid $8,000 for the procedure.
Yet the idea of surgery to help trim plump ankles "seems a little drastic," says Jessica LeRoy, MA, MFT, a clinical psychotherapist in California and clinical director for the Center for the Psychology of Women. "In our society, it seems we're already having surgery done for everything."
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