Senile obesity

It turned out why people gain weight with age

Nikita Shevtsov, Naked Science

Weight gain with age is a problem that few people manage to avoid. Excess weight causes the occurrence of heart disease and endocrine disorders, such as diabetes mellitus. All these conditions significantly shorten life. It is widely believed that weight gain in old age is associated with a sedentary lifestyle, and a new study partially confirms this point of view. Article by Arner et al. Adipose lipid turnover and long-term changes in body weight is published in the journal Nature Medicine.

Scientists selected and analyzed fat cells from 54 men and women during 13 years of their lives. During this time, all subjects, regardless of whether they gained weight or lost weight, had a decrease in lipid metabolism in adipose tissue, that is, the rate at which fat molecules are broken down and stored in cells. It turned out that those who did not compensate for this by eating a small amount of calories increased their weight by an average of 20 percent.

The researchers also studied lipid metabolism in 41 women who underwent surgery to remove adipose tissue, and assessed how the speed of this process affected their ability to maintain weight for seven years after the procedure. The results showed that only those who had a low metabolic rate before surgery were able to increase it and keep the weight at the same level. In people with an increased rate of fat metabolism, measured before surgery, the weight began to grow slowly.

According to scientists, the results of the study suggest that with age, the processes in our adipose tissue regulate changes in body weight. It turns out that it does not depend on other factors. The authors of the study claim that their work will help open up new ways to combat obesity.

Previous studies have shown that one of the ways to speed up lipid metabolism in adipose tissue is sports. The new work confirms this idea and indicates that the long-term result of weight loss surgery will improve if the person who underwent it maintains a high level of physical activity.

Obesity can also contribute to the development of cancer. Excess weight is increasingly common in young people, which is why oncological diseases are observed in them more often. This conclusion was reached by scientists when analyzing the number of cancer cases in various age categories.

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