Not sure if this is clear. Our bodies are supposed to replace all the cells every 7 or so years. Does that mean the fat too? Or when someone loses 20 year weight, are you getting rid of 20 year old fat?

  • pelespirit@sh.itjust.worksOP
    7·
    4 days ago

    It kind of says something different though. It says the amount remains stable, but they’re dying and replacing themselves. It’s quick in fat people and takes longer in lean people.

    It has been generally believed that adult humans cannot create new fat cells. We have thought, until now, that fat cells only and simply increase their fat mass by adding more lipids into fat cells that already exist in order to settle their body weight – this is true, but that is not the end of the story. Research lead by Kirsty Spalding, Jonas Frisén and Peter Arner has recently shown that adult humans constantly produce new fat cells regardless of their body weight status, sex or age.

    Peter Arner, Professor, Department of Medicine, Huddinge, said “The total number of fat cells in the body is stable overtime, because the making of new fat cells is counterbalanced by an equally rapid break down of the already existing fat cells due to cell death.”

    Edit: I can’t wrap my head around this. Why would anyone keep gaining weight then? If the cells are replaced really quickly, why does it get replaced with the exact same amount of weight? It must be from evolution or something, but it’s weird. That means biome, skin, fat, etc, the stuff that replaces itself quickly, keeps the healthy and unhealthy.

    • idiomaddict@lemmy.world
      10·
      4 days ago

      From your body’s perspective, fat is insurance. Our bodies aren’t used to excess, so we’re built to accumulate fat whenever we can.

    • jet@hackertalks.comEnglish
      21·
      3 days ago

      People eating a whole food diet don’t keep gaining weight throughout life, it’s the modern diets that are tied to the epidemics of modern obesity.

      Basically it’s the carbohydrate insulin model of obesity. Eat carbs, drive high blood glucose, drive high insulin, which drives weight gain.

      • RBWells@lemmy.world
        2·
        17 hours ago

        Kind of. I eat well, not much junk, and was underweight for most of my life, hit menopause and now at a normal BMI but that is like 25lb (11kg) more than I weighed when young. I do work out heavier now, but no way could I have maintained this much weight as a young woman, my body would not do it.

        Stable again now, it’s not like I keep putting on weight just not skinny like before. More like a medium - not average for the US, our average would be fat - but true medium like about the middle of how much my body can healthily weigh, rather than a little less than it should.

        My mom and grandma both gained in midlife then lost weight in old age and told me not to diet in midlife because that weight you might be glad for when old, it is cushion for getting sick and losing weight.