Belly Fat Could Incite Hunger
You may consider it as bad news or a new motivation for dieting and workouts, but Dr. Yaiping Yang and his colleagues at the Lawson Health Research Institute affiliated with The University of Western Ontario found that abdominal fat tissue can reproduce a hormone that stimulates fat cell production. To put it simply, the extra fat we carry around our waist could be making us hungrier, so we eat more, which in turn leads to even more belly fat.
Dr. Yang identified that the hormone Neuropeptide Y (NPY), which previously was believed to only be produced by the brain, is reproduced by abdominal fat tissue.
Yang believes this novel finding will change in the way we think about and treat abdominal obesity.
The traditional view of the main reasons why overweight people consume more food is because their brains overproduce the hormone NPY, the most potent appetite stimulating hormone known, sending signals to the individual that they are constantly hungry. However, Yang, a Professor in the Departments of Obstetrics & Gynaecology and Physiology & Pharmacology at the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry at The University of Western Ontario, has provided evidence that in obese rat models NPY is also produced locally by abdominal fat.
A fat cell is unable to replicate itself. But the researchers found NPY stimulates the replication of fat cell precursor cells, which then change into fat cells, thus increasing fat cell number.
Yang claims “this may lead to a vicious cycle where NPY produced in the brain causes you to eat more thus gaining more fat around your waist, and then that fat produces more NYP hormone which results in even more fat cells.”
Being overweight is universally acknowledged to be unhealthy. However, because of its anatomical location and its byproducts, abdominal fat is considered to be the most dangerous. People with the apple shape run an elevated risk for heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, hypertension and some cancers.
Next, the researchers are planning to investigate whether NPY produced by fat is released into the body’s circulatory system. If the researchers find that NPY is transported in the blood circulation then it may be possible to work out a simple blood test to detect increased levels of NPY. “If you can detect NPY early and identify those at risk for abdominal obesity we can then target therapy to turn off NPY. It would be much easier to use drugs to prevent obesity than to treat the diseases caused by obesity.”
These findings were reported in a recent issue of The FASEB Journal.