Let the fat fight among themselves? Destroy the fat from the inside

Recently, there was a hot search on Weibo. A lady took diet pills and went to the hospital for a checkup because she felt unwell. In the end, she was diagnosed with drug use. It was really scary. After identification, the diet pills the lady bought online contained pseudoephedrine, which is also one of the raw materials of methamphetamine. She wanted to lose weight quietly, but she encountered such a risk. If she was caught on a crackdown on pornography and illegal publications, she would have no way to explain herself.

Whether for health or aesthetic purposes, losing weight is bound to be a difficult road. Although there is a guideline of controlling your diet and moving your legs, when it comes to actual practice, we always want to find a fat-reducing method that is greater than the sum of its parts, and this has also fed countless companies in the market. There are a wide variety of weight-loss pills, fat-reducing videos, books, etc. on the market, and screening out reliable information, effective and safe products is also a game of competition.

Is painless weight loss just a pipe dream? This painlessness is not just a small friction in the process of finding the way, but also a relatively safe and effective way in actual operation. Are there any new tricks in the cutting-edge fat loss research methods? The kind of effective method that is approved by scientists.

Fat kills fat

Recently, researchers from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) published a fat-loss paper on a new metabolic pathway in the journal Nature. Scientists have discovered a new metabolic pathway in fat cells. This metabolic pathway in fat cells is related to the storage and consumption of glycogen. We learned in high school biology that glycogen is not only used to store energy, but also to regulate energy consumption and heat production. The new metabolic pathway means that we may be able to provide new methods for weight loss and metabolism by regulating glycogen metabolism.

Readers who are interested in biological sciences may know that there are two forms of fat tissue in the human body. One is white fat tissue that stores oil. Fat cells store energy in the form of single large oil droplets. The other is brown fat tissue. There are many small oil droplets and mitochondria in the cells. It is the fat that is converted into heat during fat burning exercise. In between the two, there is also a kind of free "fence-sitter" fat cells, which are some darker beige fat cells. They can be activated under certain conditions to burn energy.

(Brown Fat Cells)

The new treatment idea is to try to make fat cells "brown" so that they consume more energy and produce more heat. In this study, scientists found that the browning of fat cells depends on their ability to make and degrade glycogen. Specifically, this turnover change of glycogen drives fat cells to continuously express a protein called UCP1 (uncoupling protein 1). This signal tells the cell that it can safely "uncouple" the generation of ATP molecules, thereby burning energy faster.

Through experiments on mice, researchers have confirmed that glycogen regulates and promotes fat metabolism: the higher the turnover of glycogen, the stronger the metabolic process, the faster the fat burning rate, and the obese mice in the experiment have a good weight loss effect. Scientists have also confirmed the effectiveness of this method from another perspective through genetic testing. Scientists have found through genetic testing that some genes involved in this regulatory process are found to be expressed at low levels in obese patients or people prone to obesity, indicating that the glycogen pathway in fat cells is very necessary for burning excess fat.

According to this new discovery, for some obese people, it may be possible to target glycogen metabolism in fat cells. Coincidentally, a few days ago, the team of Professor Yang Zhonghan of the School of Medicine of Sun Yat-sen University published a new paper in PLOS Biology. The researchers discovered immune molecules that promote fat burning. After injecting mice with this immune molecule, they will not become obese even if they eat and drink a lot, and they can maintain metabolic health. The principle is similar to the "browning" of fat cells. The researchers stimulated fat cells by injecting specific immune system signaling molecules to increase the number of "fence-sitter" beige cells in fat cells to regulate metabolism. Beige fat cells are rich in mitochondria, which can consume a lot of energy.

Both studies have improved metabolism by regulating metabolism by turning fat cells into "rice" or "brown". This idea reminds me of the "Queen kills the Queen" in the TV series "Empresses in the Palace". The idea of ​​using fat to kill fat has achieved good results in mouse experiments. This is also a potential solution for treating obesity at the molecular and cellular level of fat. In addition to this relatively painless fat reduction solution, humans have also had some other ideas on the road to weight loss.

Blue Food and Electric Pulses

Under the general principle of "control your mouth and move your legs", it is too difficult for modern people who are completely accustomed to the convenience and efficiency of life to move their legs. In addition, the time and energy at work are limited, so some people move towards the relatively easy "control your mouth" and have various ideas about controlling their mouth. At present, the main idea of ​​controlling your mouth is to create various illusions in the brain, either to avoid eating poisonous food or to create the illusion of "fullness".

We can imagine pasta covered with tomato beef sauce, spicy turkey noodles, these red foods make people feel full of energy, and blue foods, such as blue steak, blue hot pot (feeling like the taste of Blue Moon)... just thinking about it is enough. If these blue edible pigments are added to the food you usually eat, would you still want to eat? Food must have color, aroma and taste to be called delicious. If this kind of careful seasoning is added to the color level, it should be able to reduce appetite.

A study found that when using the same grade of ingredients, painting sushi blue will greatly affect its taste rating. When the fish or meat in sushi changes color, people will always subconsciously think that the food is spoiled or poisoned. A famous candy company once launched blue candy in a unique way, but received many complaints of "spoilage" and was forced to withdraw all of them. Blue always reminds people of the use of artificial colors or chemical additives, which makes people disgusted. From a genetic level, dating back to ancient times, it may be that our ancestors found that most black, blue, and purple foods were poisonous or spoiled in the process of looking for food, so when our ancestors encountered these foods again, they would consciously avoid them, and thus developed a fear of them. This subconscious influence has been passed down from generation to generation, and modern people don't like this color of food.

As for giving the brain the illusion of being full, the main solution is to implant a device that emits pulses into the body and transmits false signals to the vagus nerve, which mainly connects the brain to the stomach. The false pulse information imitates the natural peristalsis of the stomach and makes you feel full after a few bites. Laboratory mouse experiments have shown that by stimulating nerves, these devices can help mice lose about 40% of their body weight. At present, this method of using electrical pulses has not been applied to humans. It is mainly still being conducted in various animal experiments. It will take some time before it can be used commercially on humans.

No matter which method you use to control your mouth, it seems to be very useful. However, the idea of ​​implanting some equipment is still a long way from the laboratory to real life. Blue food can be easily operated. Some people may wonder where to buy reliable edible coloring. Please go directly to Purple Cabbage. Add a little to the cooked noodles or army hot pot, and you will lose your appetite. It can be said to be a devilish act.

Do we really need to go against our instincts?

Regardless of the method, we can find that life is full of various fat-reducing operations. Although public opinion has been emphasizing the diversity of aesthetics, in real life, this argument is really bleak and thin compared with the facts presented. The most popular in various short videos is the thin waist and thin legs of beauties, and the most beautiful and eye-catching in fashion shows is the paper-like model. Although everyone is criticizing the behavior of creating body anxiety and body staring in the online environment, in real life, it is still not friendly to obese people.

Aesthetics is a matter of different people, and there is no need to unify the standard of thinness as beauty. The people who are facing the most urgent need of fat-reduction research or programs are obese people. How to make this group stay away from diseases and become healthier, rather than a group of people with normal body shapes, urging research and pursuing the standard of thinness and beauty. Excessive pursuit of new weight-loss methods and applications will also aggravate the monotony of social aesthetics.

The law of Tao is diversity and change. Fat loss is fundamentally not about academic research or technical issues, but about self-acceptance. Ask yourself: Is it necessary to focus on your body? Do we really need to lose weight? Extreme control of eating behavior is negative and anti-human. If you tie all your emotions to the fluctuation of your weight, your mood will be like a roller coaster. Once there is a rebound fluctuation, the whole day will be lost. How can you not be anxious? Since there are more plus-size models on the catwalk, do we need to lose weight to become a Victoria's Secret Angel?

If we define a good figure, health is the standard to measure whether a figure is good or not. If your aesthetic is that thinness is beautiful, then just restrain yourself. If you don’t mind being slightly fat, then be a happy little dumpling. If you are really an obese person with a disease, you still need to control your appetite and let your body return to a healthy state. In any case, as long as you have a healthy figure, enjoy the food happily with the person you like, and when you are stared at, please stare back. There are so many beautiful things, don’t just focus on the figure, there is a lot of spring waiting for you to spend.