Weight Loss: Researchers Discover Unhealthy Messages Sent by Fat

Are fat cells hijacking your health with unhealthy messages?German researchers have managed to find a way to "listen" to fat cells, and it turns out those fat cells are not playing nice with the rest of the body. The researchers (through an impossibly complicated series of steps that only a pack of Germans could bear to complete) were able to identify 20 new substances secreted by fat and released into the blood stream (which acts as a kind of internal communications network for the body.) These chemical messages sent by fat cells in the form of hormones and other substances can alter fat and sugar metabolism and effect other regulatory processes including appetite, immune responses and vascular maintenance.

 This new research bulds on earlier studies establishing mid-section fat (the spare tire) as an inflammatory organ, releasing inflammatory molecules that can trigger unhealthy immune responses, and have been associated with heart disease and cancer among numerous other disease processes. The authors of this latest study, published in the Journal of Proteome Research, point out that these previously unidentified messages sent by fat cells alter a person's blood chemistry, and are very likely related to the elevated rate of heart disease, diabetes and even cancer in obese people. Now weight loss can be seen as a way to turn down the volume on fats' unhealthy message.

Read the study.