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I found this area interesting: > “A fat cell is almost like a primitive immune cell,” says Hotamisligil. “It can request the assistance of immune cells when i
by Someone1234 8y ago
I found this area interesting:
> “A fat cell is almost like a primitive immune cell,” says Hotamisligil. “It can request the assistance of immune cells when in trouble, but if the stress continues, and the immune cells remain, they start changing their character and behavior from helpful to harmful.”
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> When overloaded with stored lipid, fat cells begin to lose their functional and structural integrity and may start spilling their toxic cargo. When cells fail like this, the immune system kicks in, initially to assist in clean-up. Macrophages engorge themselves on the leaking fuel, and may die themselves during this process. But in the long run, what is meant to be a mutually beneficial interaction between the metabolic and immune systems turns into a very dangerous and harmful relationship. Obese individuals thus live in a state of chronic stress and inflammation; in fact, many people do, because their energy intake vastly exceeds their needs. Hotamisligil calls this chronic energy overload, and the resulting abnormal immune response, metaflammation: metabolic inflammation.
This article brings together a whole host of different areas of research about human inflammation. I would recommend reading it, but it isn't an article you can skim and there's no big bang conclusions, just more areas of keen research and exploration.
- andai 8y ago> Critics might suggest that inflammation is just a symptom in these diseases, rather than a cause. But Hotamisligil says, unequivocally, “Chronic inflammation is uniformly damaging and is absolutely causal to the process, because if you interfere with it, you can reverse the pathology.” And this ability to control such diseases simply by reversing inflammation is a biological response, dating far back to the time of a common ancestor, that has been retained across diverse species of animals to the present day, he says, pointing to experimental evidence: “If you can make Drosophila [fruit fly] diabetic, and then block the inflammatory response systems, you can cure diabetes in Drosophila, the same way you can reverse it in the mouse, in primates, and in humans, provided that you do it with the right tools. Of course, the higher the organism, the more complex these pathways are, so it takes more effort to define the precise mechanisms to manipulate.”
- all_blue_chucks 8y agoGetting off-topic, but how do biologists define the "highness" of an organism?
- Haga 8y agoComplexity, as in complexity of gestation, development and life cycle.
- all_blue_chucks 8y agoWhat units are used to measure complexity?
- fifnir 8y agoI slipped and wrote "higher eukaryotes" in relation to yeast and this is my post-doc's comments: "that broke my heart :( other eukaryotes? multicellular eukaryotes? animals? Whatever you like, but please, no "higher", the poor yeast have been evolving for a long time and are much better than us at fermenting beers..." <edit> This is a great paper that touches on animal complexity, see "Developmental Depth" and "Structural depth" https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228365097_Possible_Largest-Scale_Trends_in_Organismal_Evolution_Eight_Live_Hypotheses https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228365097_Possible_...
- coldtea 8y agoBased on how many grams of weed it has smoked.
- jeffdavis 8y agoIf you interfere with the inflammation, doesn't that still leave the problem of lipids leaking?
- sametmax 8y agoThe idea is to also mitigate the source of the inflammation, so you both goes short term and long term.
- agumonkey 8y agothe fat -> immune response is reminiscent of cardiovascular diseases too
- sunshinerag 8y agoIn what ways? Can you be specific?
- nessunodoro 8y agoBook recommendation - "Toxic Fat" by Barry Sears (disclosure - the father of a friend of mine). Its thesis is in line with much of the research in this article.