Did you know that fat cells can make us more susceptible to a whole range of conditions as we put on weight?
Did you know that having more fat cells can affect our health and impact our immune system?
Fat cells are actually very interesting cells in our bodies and right here we’re about to delve into 3 very powerful ways weight loss can reduce inflammation naturally. And it all has to do with our fat cells!!
1. Losing Weight Restores The Communication Between Organs and Hormones
Fat cells are VERY metabolically active.
Our fat cells are extremely interesting because they can affect our whole body. We don’t think of them like that because we feel like they just sit there but they are not just dormant things that fill up and just sit there.
In fact, fat cells are now recognised as a VERY active endocrine organ.
That’s right, your fat cells are like an organ in themselves and secrete various different hormones and chemical signals that help regulate many physiological and pathological processes and maintain balance in the body.
Fat cells can talk directly to our liver via the portal vein and they also talk to various other organs via chemical messengers such as leptin and adiponectin.
This process is amazing if the process is functioning properly but as you put on weight, the cross talk becomes interrupted and the messages aren’t clear. This creates all sorts of problems including increased inflammation.
So losing weight can restore the communication between organs and hormones that is necessary if we want to feel healthy and alive.
2. Losing Weight Reduces The Production Of Inflammatory Molecules
When fat cells increase in number and size, our immunity is altered and our fat tissue starts producing and secreting various chemical messengers that mediate the crosstalk between our fat tissue and various metabolic organs like the liver, muscles, pancreas, and the central nervous system too.
But increasing fat cells mediate a negative cross talk and one of the driving factors for this is that most chemical messengers in our fat cells are pro-inflammatory and contribute to low-grade systemic inflammation.
Our metabolic and immune systems are intricately connected and so we have fat cells that are an active organ that produce and secrete various chemical messengers that interrupt the balance and function of the body.
That means losing weight can reverse this process from occurring. Most importantly, losing weight decreases the production of inflammatory molecules.
3. Getting Rid Of Fat, Gets Rid Of Sick Fat
We have a couple of different sorts of fat, we have subcutaneous fat and this is the fat on our buttocks and thighs and is ultimately for energy storage. It’s the kind of fat we use for energy later if we need it. But we also have visceral fat.
Visceral fat is fat that gets stored around the mid section, around all our organs. It’s the fat we all know as ‘belly fat’, and it’s this fat that is more metabolically active and increases inflammation and all risk factors for disease.
Once we start gaining more and more visceral fat we begin recruiting more and more immune cells and pro-inflammatory molecules because our fat cells are stressed and sick.
In the scientific literature, they call it ‘sick fat’ because of this reason.
The fat cells become sick because they are not getting enough nutrients and oxygen and so the immune cells cluster around the stressed fat cells and the whole process of inflammation begins, continues, and progressively becomes worse.
That is the unfortunately thing about inflammation is that it will be an ongoing cycle if you do nothing about it. The good thing is we can do something about it.
Weight loss reduces visceral fat (aka belly fat or sick fat) and this reduces inflammation naturally because the body produces less pro-inflammatory molecules and the immune system begins to restore balance.
Losing Weight Makes A MASSIVE Difference
Weight loss can have a MASSIVE impact on our health. MASSIVE. Lots and lots of things can be improved by simply losing weight, including the ability to powerfully reduce inflammation naturally!!
I hope you found this helpful and it gets you motivated to lose a bit of weight, because even a little bit can make a BIG difference.
Jedha
Nutritionist & Health Coach
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