Fat Cells Reproducing as Quickly as They Die

Are you one of the thousands that continue to diet and find yourself still feeling fat or not the size you thought you would be after spending weeks or months on a strict regime? The reason may be that once you reach adulthood the number of fat cells you have never really changes. Fat cells may shrink in size or even get larger, but as quickly as they die they grow back, a new study conducted in Sweden has found. This may hopefully lend a new avenue for developing diets or weight loss drugs that would prevent the re-growth or possibly slow the reproduction of fat cells.

It seems that through the researcher's study, to determine the number of fat cells someone has, they found that fat cells grew in number during childhood and throughout the teenage years, but leveled off once patients reached adulthood. These findings helped the team of researchers to determine that we were not born with a certain number of fat cells or that it was determined at birth one would be fat. Rather their findings showed the number of fat cells grew into adulthood and then leveled off. When someone loses weight their fat cells may shrink, but the number of cells remain almost the same. The same applied when someone gained weight the cells would just get larger, but the number of cells would stay almost the same. While some cells die off new ones replace them. The results show how important it is to prevent obesity in children, since childhood is the time that the number of fat cells an individual will have, during their adulthood, is determined.

The research was conducted by a team from Sweden's Karolinska Institute and were published online in the journal Nature. During the study, researchers evaluated the number of fat cells in 687 adults and compared those to fat cells in children and teens from past research. This helped them to conclude that fat cells grew in quantity until adulthood when they leveled off. During the research, they also evaluated 35 different people's fatty tissue, both lean and obese, removed during liposuction or abdominal surgery compared to samples before surgery. They concluded that even after surgery patient's fat cells died and were replenished with new ones with the patients retaining the same number of fat cells as they had before surgery.

The research has helped to realize that fat cells do not go away, but they can shrink or grow larger as we loose or gain weight. Research results may help some to explain why it is so difficult to maintain weight loss. While these results may seem like very bad news it is possibly a discovery that will help doctors and scientist find new obesity therapies.