Word: fat
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Researchers at Wake Forest University who study stress in monkeys think they may have discovered a clue: fat. More specifically, the particular form of fat called visceral fat, which tends to build up in the abdomen (those dreaded beer bellies and love handles). Researchers believe this abdominal fat lodges deep within visceral organs, such as the heart, liver and blood vessels, and may be an indicator of increased heart-attack risk. In a study of 42 female monkeys, the scientists found that those with the most social stress - in the monkeys' case, that meant being at the bottom...
...years now, there has been a recognition that the pattern in which people lay down fat is associated more with health than the absolute amount of fat," says study co-author Carol Shively, a pathologist at Wake Forest. "Fat cells that live in the visceral depot behave differently than cells that live in other areas of the body...
Recent evidence suggests that visceral fat cells are active, unlike the fat cells found elsewhere in the body just under the skin, known as subcutaneous fat. Those fat cells are essentially just storage sinks for calories. But visceral fat cells actively secrete hormones and other agents that affect the metabolism of sugar and the way the body burns calories. In people, visceral fat has been linked to metabolic changes, such as higher blood pressure and blood-sugar levels, that increase risk for diabetes and heart disease...
Shively and her colleagues also knew that people who produce excessive amounts of the stress hormone cortisol tend to have bulky waistlines; they have apple-shaped bodies, rather than pear-shaped ones. So the researchers wanted to examine all these factors - stress, abdominal fat and health risk - in one study. The problem, of course, is that measuring the relationship between stress and visceral fat in people in a controlled fashion isn't easy. So the team turned to monkeys. For nearly 2½ years, she and her team fed the animals a typical Western diet, with 40% of calories coming...
...scans showed that group leaders and the second most dominant monkeys had lower amounts of visceral fat than their subordinates, who carried the bulk of their body fat in their guts. In human populations, something similar happens: studies have linked lower social status to a higher incidence of metabolic syndrome - the condition whose symptoms include high blood pressure, high glucose levels and being overweight - which promotes heart disease...