Latest Fat Stories

Eat your fish and you may save your sight.  A new study finds a diet high in omega-3 fatty acids may help the 10 percent of people 66 to 74 years old who suffer from age-related macular degeneration (AMD).Omega-3 fatty acids have already been shown to protect against a plethora of diseases, including atherosclerosis and Alzheimer's disease. Dr. Chi-Chao Chan at the National Eye Institute in Bethesda, Md., studied how omega-3 directly affected a mouse model of AMD. The diet high in omega-3...

A team of researchers from the Yale University (United States) and a Spanish company have developed a system to detect the vapors emitted by human skin in real time. The scientists think that these substances, essentially made up of fatty acids, are what attract mosquitoes and enable dogs to identify their owners."The spectrum of the vapors emitted by human skin is dominated by fatty acids. These substances are not very volatile, but we have developed an 'electronic nose' able to...

Israeli and German researchers suggest body fat can become stressed and behave dysfunctionally. The consequences of this dysfunctionality, the researchers say, may include common diseases -- such as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases -- attributed to obesity. The study, published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, has identified a signaling pathway in abdominal fat. Their finding suggests fat is not a simple storage area but an active tissue excreting...

 Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) researchers, in a collaboration with colleagues from the University of Leipzig, Germany, have identified a signaling pathway that is operational in intra-abdominal fat, the fat depot that is most strongly tied to obesity-related morbidity.The paper was just published in the Endocrine Society's the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism ( J. Clin. Endocrinol. Metab. 2009; 94:2507-251)"Fat tissue in obesity is dysfunctional, yet, the...

Obesity very often leads to insulin resistance, and now researchers reporting in the July 8 issue of Cell Metabolism, a Cell Press publication, have uncovered another factor behind that ill consequence. The newly discovered culprit"”a protein known as pigment epithelium-derived factor (PEDF for short)"”is secreted by fat cells. They also report evidence to suggest that specifically blocking that protein's action may reverse some of the health complications that come with...

 Partially hydrogenated vegetable oils in processed foods contain trans fatty acids that interfere with the regulation of blood flow. A new report reveals a new way in which these "trans fats" gum up the cellular machinery that keeps blood moving through arteries and veins.In the August 2009 issue of the international journal Atherosclerosis, University of Illinois emeritus veterinary biosciences professor Fred Kummerow reports for the first time that trans fats interfere with...

Previously thought. The results, which suggest a new way to treat obesity, were presented at The Endocrine Society's 91st Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. Brown fat burns off calories and generates heat in babies and small mammals. Most of our body fat is white fat, which also provides insulation but stores calories. It becomes "bad" fat when you have too much. The "good" fat"”brown fat"”was considered essentially nonexistent in human adults. "We now know...

Changes in the fats in the Western diet may account for the increase in inflammation, which is linked to heart disease and diabetes, U.S. researchers said. Inflammation is the body's response to injury or infection, but the body's immune system can also trigger an inflammatory response when there are no foreign substances to fight off and causes damage to body organs and blood vessels. C-reactive protein increases during systemic inflammation and it has been suggested that testing for its...

For the past century, changes in the Western diet have altered the consumption of omega-6 fatty acids (w6, found in meat and vegetable oils) compared with omega-3 fatty acids (w3, found in flax and fish oil). Many studies seem to indicate this shift has brought about an increased risk of inflammation (associated with autoimmunity and allergy), and now using a controlled diet study with human volunteers, researchers may have teased out a biological basis for these reported...

The ghrelin hormone not only stimulates the brain giving rise to an increase in appetite, but also favors the accumulation of lipids in visceral fatty tissue, located in the abdominal zone and considered to be the most harmful. This is the conclusion of research undertaken at Metabolic Research Laboratory of the University Hospital of Navarra, published recently in the International Journal of Obesity.Ghrelin is a hormone produced in the stomach and the function of which is to tell the brain...