Word: kissebah
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...either injected daily, like insulin, or implanted under the skin for the rest of one's life. In the laboratory experiments reported last week, the obese mice started regaining weight as soon as the injections stopped. Even with a boost from something like leptin, cautions Dr. Ahmed Kissebah, an obesity expert at the Medical College of Wisconsin, the formerly fat cannot afford to become less vigilant. "People will still have to lose weight the hard way," he predicts. "It'll be like diabetes: you still have to exercise and watch your food intake...
Seeking an explanation for these findings, Kissebah examined fat and muscle biopsies taken from the abdomen and thighs of his subjects. He discovered that fat cells taken from the abdomen of upper-body-obese women were enlarged, appearing like so many overstuffed pillows. In lower-body obesity, by contrast, fat cells were normal in size, though excessive in number...
...shown that the overpacked fat cells have a smaller number of the receptors to which insulin attaches, controlling the utilization of sugar. This may account for the elevated levels of blood sugar and insulin. The tendency to acquire oversize fat cells may in turn be regulated by hormones, suggests Kissebah. Women with upper-body obesity, he found, have a higher ratio of male hormones to female hormones than their lower-body-obese counterparts or women of average weight. The very distribution of their adipose tissue-around and above the waist-is more like that of pot-bellied men. Significantly, obese...
Doctors have long known that overweight increases the risk of diabetes. The rule of thumb is that the risk doubles for each additional 20 lbs. of flab. Kissebah hopes his study will refine the rule. About 40% of American women are overweight, he points out, but only a quarter of that group have upper-body obesity. Such women, he suggests, should all be tested for diabetes and strongly urged to reduce. Diabetic tendencies and symptoms can often be effectively controlled or even eliminated by proper diet and weight loss alone...
...fringe benefit of his study, Kissebah may have solved the age-old riddle of why it is so much easier for some women to lose weight above the waist (where fat cells may be enlarged) than to slim down their hips. Says he: "It is much easier to shrink fat cells than to do away with them...