You can look at a donut and gain five pounds.
Funny — but maybe even a tiny bit true.
A new study published in the journal Nature hints at a correlation between obesity and changes at the cellular level in fat cells that appear to remember obesity.
Weight loss experts have long noted that obese people who slim down tend to revert back to obesity — the yo-yo effect. But the reasons were unclear. Was it merely that the people reverted to old eating styles or was there something else at play?
Now scientists think that, among the many reasons for re-gaining weight, at least one might be a sort of genetic memory.
In mouse studies, scientists put obese mice on a diet until they slimmed down, and then compared their fat cells to mice who had never been obese. In the formerly obese mice, fat cells absorbed more sugar and fat than the cells from mice that never were obese. Certain genes were active in obese mice that were not active in never-obese mice. In fact, when put on a high calorie diet, the formerly obese mice gained more weight faster than the never-obese mice.
The findings do not indicate that fat cell memory alone is the cause of obesity. It is also not known what factors, if any, can alter fat cell memory or if fat cell memory ever changes.
