"A Fat Rant"

[Kitsune]

Originally Posted by Kingswood

If everyone ate a healthy diet in moderation and got enough exercise, there would still be fat people.

I didn't buy this at first, but I browsed around and found some interesting articles that detail how complex the issues is, including this one about stress.

That's because fat in the abdominal area functions differently than fat elsewhere in the body. It has a greater blood supply as well as more receptors for cortisol, a stress hormone. Cortisol levels rise and fall throughout the day, but when you're under constant stress, the amount of the hormone you produce remains elevated. With high stress and, consequently, high cortisol levels, more fat is deposited in the abdominal area since there are more cortisol receptors there.

That is some odd stuff. Point taken.

[glatt]

Originally Posted by Kitsune

I browsed around and found some interesting articles that detail how complex the issues is, including this one about stress.

Interesting. This was front page news today in the Washington Post because of the results of a new study.

Scientists reported yesterday that they have uncovered a biological switch by which stress can promote obesity, a discovery that could help explain the world's growing weight problem and lead to new ways to melt flab and manipulate fat for cosmetic purposes.

In a series of experiments on mice, researchers showed that the neurochemical pathway they identified promotes fat growth in chronically stressed animals that eat the equivalent of a junk-food diet.

The international team also showed that blocking those signals can prevent fat accumulation and shrink fat deposits and that stimulating the pathway can strategically create new deposits -- possibly offering new ways to remove fat

The Abstract from Nature Medicine.