The Complexities of Fat and Obesity
Fat! Fat!! fat!!!, I am sure you have heard so many bad comments on this because it is not healthy. Have you tried telling a current champion of SUMO that their fat is bad for them? There is a possibility that you wouldn't be giving the testimony in sound health. Fat makes up most of our body, stored in the largest organ in our body, the skin. In reality, we cannot live without fat, and most people want to lose fat so desperately. A lot of people go to the gym just to burn down the fat that they have even when they are not obese or do not look like people with fat at all. Actually, there are so many things that we do not tell the random person who is not medically inclined. We do not tell them that fat is needed in our life activity, we do not tell them that fat is released with lots of hormones in our body for our bone development, brain development, and in our reproductive organs.
It is no doubt that when a person has too much fat, they are at a high risk for cholesterol-related issues, diabetes, and cardiac issues, and we need to understand that even while I have said that fat is important for our survival, it is still bad if not properly understood. Fat cells in the body are storage organs in our body, they are referred to as adipocytes and are made up of triglycerides which are burned to release energy. Our body breaks down most food, such as carbohydrates as glucose, and fat. Glucose is used as immediate fuel in the body and it is stored as glycogen in the liver and our muscles and the depletion of glycogen also leads to the burning of fat. Glycogen is stored in the short term but fat can be stored for a long time to help produce energy when needed. Fat cells can increase more than their normal size and this allows for the storage of fat for energy.
If I will quickly touch on the importance of fat, then I would start with us as infants. As infants, babies have a lot of fat and the brain of infants need the fat to function properly. As we grow, fat is also very important. In females, fat is responsible for estrogen production and this is responsible for puberty in females.
While a lot of people complain of fat even when not obese, people with lipodystrophy suffer from no fat at all under the skin and wish they could get fat. Not having fat in the tissue can cause excess calories to be collected by the liver and cause the liver to be inflamed over time. If you have observed people who are overweight, they tend to eat very often and research shows that it is a result of the lack of the hormone Leptin as a result of a mutated leptin gene causing them to eat consistently. Leptin would normally signal the hypothalamus in the brain triggering that the body has enough fat and does not need to eat but when there are little to no leptin in the body, the brain is triggered to eat.
Obesity can also be genetic as it would be found that if identical twins do the same thing, eating the same amount of calories, they would put on the same amount of weight since they share 100% of genetic properties. This suggests that genetics can contribute to the likelihood of developing obesity. Genetics also plays a role in weight gain and loss, with genes such as FTO (Fat Mass and Obesity-Associated) gene responsible for obesity, and other genes like MC4R (Melanocortin 4 Receptor) gene which is responsible for appetite regulation, and so on.
In recent years the rate of obesity has increased worldwide, and we could say that this is related to people not performing physically energetic types of work. In our world now, a lot of people are sitting all day with little exercise, but then our diets are completely changing. Currently, we eat lots of non-fiber foods with lots of calories, and this allows us to store lots of fat from excess glucose. I do not believe that there will be a decrease in the Western post-industrial lifestyle, nor will there be a reduction in the production of these high calories and low-fiber foods, but then the ability to balance both is one of the ways to stay away from obesity.
Fat is indeed a sword with two sides one which is bad and the other which is good. While our body needs fat for our daily activity and cannot do without fat, it can also be an underlying factor for some diseases including cardiac diseases, diabetes, and high blood pressure.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8742898/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9860943/
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/230576493_Puberty_in_Girls_of_the_21st_Century
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Hi, friend.
This is a somewhat complex issue, it is something very real, the level of people with obesity has increased, but the emotional state of people also has a great influence. For example, I have a neighbor who was thin, suffered the loss of her daughter and now she is a person fat woman.
Greetings great topic you share