United States: Recent reports show that fat cells have the possibility of retaining a long-lasting “memory” of obesity, which renders it difficult to maintain more weight loss results.
To many, reducing their size is a difficult process, with the majority of those who manage to shed a lot of weight eventually regaining it.
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Terming the “yo-yo” effect, several theories are described to postulate the reasons why weight loss could be hard to achieve, including a specific suggestion referring to a reduction in metabolic rate associated with low-calorie diets.
Scholars at the Swiss University of ETH Zurich have now offered a molecular-level accounting for this experience.
The study, published in Nature magazine, indicated that even after the fat deposit had been shed off, the body’s fat cells contained the “memory” of obesity owing to the epigenetics – modifications in the ways genes are expressed because of day-to-day lifestyle and external conditions.
Various reasons postulated
Even if one of the persons is obese, their fat cells may become biologically marked through epigenetic changes and remain so, even when they lose weight later, euronews.com reported.
Consequently, the fat cells in the body were dysfunctional, and the manner in which they stored fats and acted following a dietary change was still a reflection of the time the person was obese.
Prevent getting obese
Taking this perspective, the researchers analyzed samples of fat taken from patients who had recently had surgery for weight loss, such as gastric bypass or stomach reduction.
This means that compared with nonobese control subjects, the obese subjects’ cells functioned as they would in the morbidly obese state for at least two years after surgery.
The researchers also tested the mice and examined the fat tissue’s characteristics prior to the process of shedding pounds.
The authors first rendered the mice obese by using a high-fat diet and later changed to a standard diet to achieve weight loss.
The authors first rendered the mice obese by giving them a high-fat diet and moved them to a standard diet to facilitate weight loss.
According to Laura Hinte, co-author of the study, these fat cells are “long-lived” ones that survive “for ten years before our body replaces them with new cells,” euronews.com reported.
“It’s precisely because of this memory effect that it’s so important to avoid being overweight in the first place because that’s the simplest way to combat the yo-yo phenomenon,” as Ferdinand von Meyenn, co-author of the study and a professor of nutrition and metabolic epigenetics at ETH Zurich stated.