Many of us may not be aware that body fat is metabolically healthy and vice versa, regardless of our weight or body type.
“Healthy fat is not the amount of fat,” says Jeffrey Horowitz, a professor at the University of Michigan who studies exercise and metabolism. “It’s all about how well fat works,” he said.
Horowitz continued that it’s the size of the fat cells that largely distinguishes healthy fat from dysfunctional fat. “The smaller the fat cells, the better,” he said.
And most importantly, you don’t need to lose weight or fat to make your existing body fat metabolically healthier.
Why Fat Cell Size Matters
According to him, large fat cells are already filled with fat. They are unable to store more and tend to leak some of their excessively packed contents into the bloodstream as fatty acids. You don’t want fatty, marbling liver, muscle, or heart (unless you’re probably raising steers).
Small fat cells, on the other hand, can essentially expand Slurp the fat in your blood. Horowitz says you want to keep the fat inside your fat cells.
Healthy fat cells also contain an active string of mitochondria, the power centers of every cell. Mitochondria convert oxygen and food into cellular energy. In general, the more mitochondria, the healthier and more resilient any cell, including fat cells.
Finally, healthy adipose tissue is rich in blood vessels that carry oxygen and nutrients to the fat cells, along with a battalion of other cells most associated with immunity to help fight inflammation. And without immune defense, adipose tissue often becomes inflamed and scarred, releasing substances into the bloodstream that cause similar unhealthy inflammation elsewhere in the body.
How Exercise Rebuilds Fat Cells
But until recently, scientists weren’t sure if or how much our fat would change. , dysfunctional mitochondria, and inflammation.
However, it remained unclear whether this process could be reversed or slowed down. , suggesting that they carry metabolically healthy body fat compared to sedentary rodents.
However, we were not laboratory mice, and many questions remained about the malleability of body fat.
a study However, published in June brought clarity. In this study, researchers at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, biopsied abdominal fat from sedentary young men, sedentary older men, and physically active older men.
Fat cells from older, sedentary men have relatively poor mitochondrial health, with fewer mitochondria and less energy produced by each mitochondria than fat from younger men. contained more mitochondria than the adipose tissue of young men, and therefore provided more energy to adipocytes overall. There were fewer signs of early inflammation than normal male fat.
“Exercise training meant more mitochondria and better functioning mitochondria,” and essentially healthier fats.
But for those who may not have had the foresight to become a lifelong cyclist, another new study shows that starting to exercise now, no matter how sedentary, can rapidly improve fat fitness. It gives you hope.
for something new studyThe researchers, published in the Journal of Physiology and supervised by Horowitz, biopsied adipose tissue from 36 sedentary obese men and women and subjected them to 20-minute interval training on a stationary bike for at least 45 minutes at a moderate pace. I instructed 4 times a week for 12 weeks.
The volunteers’ diets were closely monitored, so they did not lose weight. If not, changes in their adipose tissue may be due to weight loss rather than exercise, Horowitz said.
But even though they didn’t lose weight, the exercising volunteers were still rebuilding fat. They were rolled up with substantially more tiny fat cells and more capillaries to nourish those cells. There were few symptoms of scarring and sclerosis around the cells.
These effects were seen whether volunteers rode moderately or hard. “Intensity wasn’t the issue,” Horowitz said.
In the short term, Horowitz says, these changes should increase adipose tissue’s ability to gulp down and store more of the extra calories you ingest from large meals while on vacation, but this scenario doesn’t necessarily translate into weight gain. It does not mean an increase. This fat is usually temporarily stored and quickly converted into energy for other tissues such as muscle. But in the meantime, it’s better to store such fat in adipocytes rather than in the liver or arteries.
According to Horowitz, the long-term effects of exercise and fat revolve around inflammation, and whether and how metabolically healthy fat contributes to a metabolically healthy body remains to be seen. , perhaps especially if people suffer from obesity.
More research is needed to fully understand what constitutes healthy fat and what type and amount of exercise is best to produce or maintain it. It clearly benefits the rest, too, and whether you’re biking, walking, jogging, swimming, or whatever, you’ve got one more reason to stay active today, he said. Told.
Have a fitness question? e-mail [email protected] I may answer your question in a future column.
