We have eaten the enemy and he is us; soon, …
Earlier, we put out the idea that Fat Makes You Fatter, and that it’s Stupendously Easy to Overeat.
Well, here’s the thing: More Bad News. It doesn’t just make you fatter.
It turns out fat is not just some innocuous, passive by-product or senior-prom wallflower, like that foam insulation contractors are always snorting and using to fuse each others’ butt cracks shut as a practical joke; -or public service, depending on how you look at it.
Fat does stuff. It Acts and Re-Acts. It has Inputs and Outputs. And they affect the body.
It is, in-short, an Organ of the human body. -Doesn’t look like a Liver or a Heart, but it is an organ nonetheless.
Now Andy Gibb died from an Enlarged Heart as a result of snorting too much cocaine.
And I guess common-sense would dictate that any part of, hold your laughter guys, the human body getting too big, is a Bad thing.
And so it is with Fat.
Fairly recently, scientists have discovered that fat puts out, or is involved with, about 25 different chemicals, +And Counting.
And this is unfortunate, because our bodies are built to do one thing: Not Starve To Death In a Famine, so we store more and more and don’t stop.
Worse than that, our bodyfat DOES NOT DOWNREGULATE its chemical inputs and outputs, sometimes much, effectively, -or even perfectly, as it increases in percent of total bodymass.
Yup, you would think it would.
Contrary to people who go from driving a Yugo to a Ferrari 458 learn to go easy on the throttle with the increased engine size (before they kill themselves), our fat cells do not.
So you get increased amounts of otherwise-normal signaling chemicals in the blood, crying: “HAVOC!!1!”.
One Example: when there are too many fat cells that are too full, they start leaking fat into the bloodstream,
->Which damps receptor-sites and causes our endocrine system to become more Insulin-Resistant,
And Then, in a behavior-pattern-type Finance guys call “Pro-Cyclical”, or “F**k Dow Theory”, or “I’m going b***s-deep in a Market Top and I don’t care who knows it!”, or “Cocaine is a hell of a drug!“,
Our Pancreas has to release Even More Insulin for the same +/- net effect on Blood-Sugar. Then you wear eventually out your pancreas. Then Diabetes.
Now, back to that Fat in the Blood,
THAT can lead microbial-actors to eventually create the CV-system deposits we call Atherosclerosis,
and even blockages in the Heart, not in just the large Arteries of the cv-system.
Further Out: Even Better News! -Fat releases chemicals that cause Inflammation!
-Lots of them!
And inflammation can lead to all kinds of 2nd-order effects, like Depression, Auto-Immune Diseases, Weakening of various Tissues & Brain, or even The Big C.
Yup- There are SO many inflammatory chemicals being released that overweight and obese people get an increase of ALL TYPES of Disease and can end up living 10 years less than their full potential.
Why?
I have no idea.
Why doesn’t it rebalance for new conditions?
Why doesn’t it downregulate?
Why doesn’t it kick Mr. Thyroid in the ass-gubbins, throw him into the Ford GT of Metabolism Upregulation, stomp the Loud-Pedal and get that fat back down to 15%?
-Maybe the 100 Billion (maximum) number of Fat Cells is an Upper Limit. -After which, there is no more room to store?;
-But then, if you’ve watched any of the “Man Who Blew Up His House Like The Big Bad Wolf, Except This Time With a Gigantic Fart”-reality shows on channels like A&E,
you know that there are at least a few 600 pound Land-Orcas out there, so is 100 Billion a max for them?
-Maybe there is some type of upper-limit in either/both #number/Size, past which fat cells HAVE to re-release some of their fat back out; -and that ‘Leakage’ is the Tipping-Point of the health downtrend?
-But then why do they do it in such destructive ways? Why isn’t it just shuttled out through the GI tract?
+++as the body’s creative +embarrassing punishment for overeating?
Why does an obese body, taking the ailments out to the extreme & for lack of a better term, eventually “Eat Itself”?
My Guess: I think our bodies have just not “Learned” yet,
-how to live in times of plenty,
So they freak out like an old (or current, ymmv) version of Windows trying to run new software,
They’re Old Designs trying to make it in a new era.
-Which isn’t that out-of-line, since most of the world’s population still deals with famine or near-famine conditions, and none of us in Western Society are too much more than a few decades from the last one.
The last one in Western Europe was Holland, 1944.
Humans have been on this planet for somewhere near 2.5 Million years in one form or another, not counting Bill Maher who still exists in the form of slime, and Famine has been the rule for most of our existence over time.
But yes, even Alanis Morrisette would agree it is Ironic, that if we consume too much, we are/can-be ultimately ‘consumed’ ourselves, as a consequence.
Photo Credits:
“Ouroboros (Uroborus) with lamp”, by Leo Reynolds
“cocaine stripes”, by Rotorhead
“vector warning sign”, by Jay Lopez
“Corrosion 3”, by David Ritter
“ball waves 2”, by Gerard 79, digital-delight.ch
“BSoD1”, by sebk22
Links:
• Source: Wired-How Does Fat Kill Thee? | USAToday-Think fat just hangs around and does nothing?
• More Coverage: Obesity.org | Nature-Obesity | Wikipedia-BodyFat w/Ranges
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