Fat Cells are Forever - POSTED ON: Oct 04, 2017
Once fat cells reach a certain size -- that is, they become filled to capacity with fat content -- then new fat cells will begin to form. The fat cell number and size increases and shrinks based on deposits from food intake. “We have a seemingly infinite capacity to recruit new fat cells, but we cannot get rid of them once they have been recruited" said Michael Rosenbaum, associate professor of clinical pediatrics and medicine at Columbia University. "in most cases, weight gain initially reflects ... enlargement of existing fat cells followed by an increased growth of new fat cells.” Research has shown that obese people who have weight loss surgery have just as many fat cells two years after the surgery as before it, even though they have become much thinner. Scientist, Dr. Rudy Leibel, says that "the body controls the number of its fat cells as carefully as it controls the amount of its fat". Fat cells die and new ones are born throughout life. Scientists have found that fat cells live for only about seven years and that every time a fat cell dies, another is formed to take its place. Below see a 2017 New York Times article about this matter. Are Fat Cells Forever? By Alice Callahan February 17, 2017 - New York Times Once fat cells are formed, can you ever get rid of them? The number of fat cells in a person’s body seems to be able to change in only one direction: up. Fat cell number increases through childhood and adolescence and generally stabilizes in adulthood. But this doesn’t mean that fat cells, or adipocytes, are stagnant. The size of individual fat cells is remarkably variable, expanding and contracting with weight gain or weight loss. And as with most cell types in the body, adipocytes die eventually. “when old ones die, they are replaced by new fat cells,” said Dr. Michael Jensen, an endocrinologist and obesity researcher at the Mayo Clinic. Cell death and production appear to be tightly coupled, so although about 10 percent of adipocytes die each year, they’re replaced at the same rate. Even among bariatric surgery patients, who can lose massive amounts of weight, the number of fat cells tends to remain the same, although the cells shrink in size, studies show. Liposuction reduces the number of fat cells in a person&rsqu...
Our Weight is Regulated by Our Biological System - POSTED ON: Oct 01, 2017
I continually read a great many books, articles, blogs, and forum posts on the subject of obesity. No one,…. not even the most qualified medical doctor or scientist, … knows everything or holds only beliefs that are absolutely correct. However, I am often amazed by the vast amount of existing misconceptions, myths, and wishful-thinking that gets spread and promoted by people who present themselves as obesity “experts” or “gurus”. One thing that Scientists know for sure about obesity management, is the sad fact, that no diet, exercise, medication, not even bariatric surgery, will permanently reset the body’s tendency to defend and regain its body weight to its set point .... this generally being the highest weight that has been achieved and maintained for a notable length of time. Thus, any effective long-term treatment MUST OFFSET the complex neurobiology which is designed to eventually doom every weight-loss attempt to ultimately "fail". A comprehensive review recently published in Endocrine Reviews describes the complexity of the biological system that regulates our body weight. The 30+ page research paper, backed by about 350 scientific citations, was written by the undisputed leaders in the medical field of Endocrinology (Michael Schwartz, Randy Seeley, Eric Ravussin, Rudolph Leibel and colleagues) and is actually a “Scientific Statement” from the Endocrine Society. In other words, these Scientists know that they are talking about when they speak about the Science of Energy Balance, and in this paper they outline in excruciating scientific detail just how complex the biological system that regulates, defends, and restores body weight actually is. From the Abstract of this research paper:
We included evidence from basic science, clinical, and epidemiological literature to assess current knowledge regarding mechanisms underlying excess body-fat accumulation, the biological defense of excess fat mass, and the tendency for lost weight to be regained. A major area of emphasis is the science of energy homeostasis, the biological process that maintains weight stability by actively matching energy intake to energy expenditure over time. Growing evidence suggests that obesity is a disorder of the energy homeostasis system, rather than simply arising from the passive accumulation of exce...
Set Point - POSTED ON: Sep 30, 2017
We do not understand how the body resists weight change and why, after weight loss, so many people regain it. The concept of a set point for weight is widely accepted. The set point is like the thermostat in our central heating system. It is switched on when the temperature falls below a critical (set point) temperature and is switched off when that is exceeded.
Using the word “rachet” might help one conceptualize the set point concept. To rachet is to cause to increase or decrease by increments. A rachet is a mechanical device consisting of a toothed wheel or rack engaged with a pawl that permits it to move in only one direction.
A person has an existing set point. That person gains weight, and then gains and sustains even more weight gain. This causes the set point to be racheted up, and once it passes each rachet, there is no going back. The rachet is the biological set point and it can be easily driven upwards, but is very difficult to drive back down.
Using the fat cell theory is helpful to further explain how this works.
For an example, let’s assume an average fat cell contains 0.4 micrograms of fat each. A person gaining weight might see that fat cell load expand to 0.6 micrograms. This is an acceptable load increase, and when the person loses weight, the fat cell level drops back to 0.4 micrograms.
This seesaw can go on forever, but when the weight gain loads the fat cell up to 0.8 micrograms, a tipping point is reached, and the fat cell divides. Now we have two fat cells, each containing 0.4 micrograms. Click! That was the ratchet turning irreversibly.
When we want to return to the previous weight, we must lose half the fat we gained. The problem with this is that each fat cell now has the standard fat load of 0.4 micrograms each, and to halve this to just 0.2 micrograms per cell requires us to get the cells to live a life they do not like. If we let our mind tell us what to eat, we can overcome the disgruntled fat cells which are below their fat quota. But all the time the basic animal biology of our body will be waiting to return to 0.4 micrograms per cell.
Then, along comes an event like a vacation, a holiday, or other eating occasion, and we take our eye off the ball .. lose our mental concentration, but the fat cells in our body didn’t rest, and we’ve regained our w...
Running DOWN the UP Escalator - Weight Loss & Maintenance - POSTED ON: Sep 30, 2017
This article "hits the nail on the head" in the way it accurately describes my own personal experience, as well as what I’ve witnessed for years while watching the experiences of others. It contains one of most accurate analogies for Weight-loss and Maintenance that I’ve ever heard.
Some might find it depressing, but here in my 8th year (now starting my 12th year) of maintaining a very large weight-loss, I find it encouraging and positive to hear a medical professional, who is an expert in obesity, speak the unvarnished Truth.
Despite the fact that this Truth is rather unpleasant, and isn’t something we’re ever going to hear from Marketing Interests… (which includes most doctors and nutritionists) …. Facing it, Understanding it, and Accepting it, can be very helpful.
Running Down the Up Escalator By Dr. Ayra Sharma, M.D. (a Canadian Obesity Specialist) One of the games I used to play as a kid was to run Down the UP escalator. To get to the bottom, I had to run faster than the escalator was moving up. If I ran any slower, the escalator would gradually but steadily take me back to the top. In fact, even to just stay half-way down, I’d have to keep running at about the speed the escalator was moving up. If I stopped running even for a second, I’d be moving up again. As you may guess, I am using this analogy, to illustrate the challenge of losing weight and keeping it off. The escalator represents all the complex neuroendocrine responses to weight loss that will always want to take you back to the top – the only way to reach the bottom or to even maintain your place half-way down is to keep running. Alas, in real life, the weight-loss escalator is even trickier. For one, there is no real bottom – i.e. no matter how fast you run, you will never reach the bottom and be able to simply get off. No matter how far down the escalator you manage to get, you are still running on the escalator and it will keep moving you back up to the top the minute you stop running. But things get even more depressing, because, the further down the escalator you get, the faster it runs. This means that the further down the escalator you manage to get – the harder you have to keep running to just stay where you are. Or, in other words, when you start from the top, the escalator is running relatively slowly and you may easily manage to get down the first 5 steps. But as you go down, the escalator picks up speed and so, if you just keep up running with the speed you started at, you may not even manage to hold your place 5 steps down. And, to get to 10 steps down, you’ll definitely have to speed up – unfortunately, with every additional step you manage to make your way down, the escalator moves up even faster.
Why Diets Fail - The Salt/Water/Waste Issue - POSTED ON: Jul 27, 2017
Whatever method one chooses as a “Diet”… including Diets that are called:
… this Truth always remains. When a body with excess fat consistently takes in LESS food (meaning: calories within one or more of the three macronutrients) THAN IT USES as energy, that body will access stored fat for energy. The process of losing excess fat takes a long time.
Weight-loss diets ultimately fail approximately 95% of the time. This means that most people fail to lose very much weight on any type of diet, and very few manage to maintain any long-term weight loss. Losing weight and losing fat isn’t exactly the same thing. However most doctors, nutritionists, dietitians ... and the people who follow their advice ... don’t clearly distinguish the process of reducing body fat from the process of reducing body weight. Most people sort of KNOW that body weight and body fat are different, and vaguely understand that the scale can register body weight higher due to “water gain”.
To understand the difference between these two things, it is important to understand that there are two principal components of body weight. We can label these two: constant weight and variable weight.
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