Fat cells do WHAT?!
Welcome to February! It’s a busy month! We’re starting our Weight Loss Challenge, the partnership between Full Bloom Acres and Jazzercise of Washington/Dodge County, and it’s also Heart Health Month. Do you know what that means? Lots of information coming your way on heart health and why it matters!
This week, I thought we would take a look at a different perspective on type-2 diabetes. What does this have to do with heart health? A lot! When you have one type of chronic disease, you have a greater risk of developing a second or third. Heart disease and diabetes have a lot of the same risk factors, including being overweight and physical inactivity. But the good news is that when you work to lower your risk factors for one disease, you lower your risk factor for the other disease, as well as many of the other top 10 causes of death.
Diabetes is the sixth leading cause of death in the United States (in contrast, heart disease is number one) but diabetes seems to be really misunderstood. Many people still believe that eating fruit makes you gain weight and increases your risk of type-2 diabetes. That is absolutely not true. What we know is that eating a high-fat diet does increase your risk for both those things. Here’s the interesting part, according to researchers Spalding, Arner, and Westermark, et al., the amount of fat cells in your body doesn’t change much as an adult, even when you gain or lose weight (2008). Wait, what?
The number of fat cells in your body stays roughly the same throughout your adult life. What does change, however, is the size of your fat cells. When you gain weight, your fat cells swell because your body is squeezing more fat into them. That’s a problem. But an even bigger problem is that fat cells can become so large and bloated that fat spills out of them and back into your bloodstream, which creates a similar effect to eating a fatty meal. If that happens all the time, your body thinks you are eating fatty meals constantly and reacts accordingly.
Your doctor can measure the amount of fat in your bloodstream. The normal range is between about one hundred and five hundred micromoles per liter. However, severely overweight and obese people can have levels between six hundred and eight hundred. Interestingly, people who eat a low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet (such as most keto diets) can reach the same elevated level, even if they don’t have excess body fat. This is one of the reasons why I, and many in my field, are not generally supportive of the standard keto diet.
Unfortunately, even if you eat healthy meals, if you are overweight, fat may still be spilling into your bloodstream. The source of the fat doesn’t matter to your body in how it responds. This is important because as your body responds to excess fat in your bloodstream, again, regardless of the source, its ability to clear sugar from the blood drops. This is where insulin resistance comes into play. Insulin resistance is the cause of type-2 diabetes.
That sounds like some tough news, right? But there is something you can do about it!
Eat more plants!
Plants are amazing because most of them are very low in fat. The plants that are high in fat, like avocados and nuts, are still very nutritious and can be part of a healthy eating pattern, however, attention should be given to the serving size. It’s really easy to overeat both those things!
Research has demonstrated that as people increase their plant intake (fruits, vegetables, legumes, seeds, whole grains, and nuts), their risk for developing type-2 diabetes drops. One study out of California found that study participants who were switched to a vegan eating pattern (eating no meat or dairy) had a 78% reduction in the prevalence of type-2 diabetes! Wow!
The reason for this difference may be in the difference between the way your body processes animal fat versus plant fats. Plant fats are more likely to either be detoxified by the body or safely stored. Animal fats (particularly saturated fat), by contrast, are inflammatory and can cause the accumulation of more free radicals through the breakdown process, which is toxic to the body. The body has a hard time clearing these and they accumulate in cells which can contribute to the fat spillover effect we talked about earlier.
Bottom line, eating more plants will help to reduce your risk for type-2 diabetes by reducing your weight, helping the body get rid of toxins, and helping your fat cells return to a non-inflamed stated. Plus, plants have fiber, and we know that eating fiber reduces the risk for many diseases including type-2 diabetes and heart disease. Where do you find fiber? Only in plants!
I know, that’s a lot to process! But it’s an important concept to understand. Please reach out with any questions!
That’s all for now. I’m going to go do some yoga!
Peace, love & kale!
Lindsay
References:
Fraser, G.E. (2009). Vegetarian diets: what do we know of their effects on common chronic diseases? American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 89(5): 1607S-1612S.
Roden, M. (2004). How free fatty acids inhibit glucose utilization in human skeletal muscle. New Physiol Science. 19:92-96
Spalding, K.L., Arner, E., Westernark, P.O., et al. (2008). Dynamics of fat cell turnover in humans. Nature. 453(7196): 783-787.