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Virginia Tech drug researcher develops 'fat burning' molecule that has implications for treatment of obesity (Science Daily)
"Obesity is the biggest health problem in the United States. But, it is hard for people to lose weight and keep it off; being on a diet can be so difficult. So, a pharmacological approach, or a drug, could help out and would be beneficial for all of society," said Webster Santos, professor of chemistry and the Cliff and Agnes Lilly Faculty Fellow of Drug Discovery in the College of Science at Virginia Tech.
Santos and his colleagues have recently identified a small mitochondrial uncoupler, named BAM15, that decreases the body fat mass of mice without affecting food intake and muscle mass or increasing body temperature. Additionally, the molecule decreases insulin resistance and has beneficial effects on oxidative stress and inflammation.
The findings, published in Nature Communications on May 14, 2020, hold promise for future treatment and prevention of obesity, diabetes, and especially nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), a type of fatty liver disease that is characterized by inflammation and fat accumulation in the liver. In the next few years, the condition is expected to become the leading cause of liver transplants in the United States.
Mitochondrial uncoupler BAM15 reverses diet-induced obesity and insulin resistance in mice (open, DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-16298-2) (DX)
Mitochondrial uncoupler BAM15 inhibits artery constriction and potently activates AMPK in vascular smooth muscle cells (open, DOI: 10.1016/j.apsb.2018.07.010) (DX)
BAM15‐mediated mitochondrial uncoupling protects against obesity and improves glycemic control (open, DOI: 10.15252/emmm.202012088) (DX)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by deimtee on Saturday June 13 2020, @11:51AM (6 children)
There's got to be more to it than just modern people eating like pigs. Look at crowd scenes in movies from the the 70's and earlier. (Not ones full of extras, but where they used real crowd footage because it was cheaper.) Fat people were rare. Compare it with a modern crowd shot where playing spot-the-skinny is a tough game.
There were plenty of people back then who had enough money to eat as much as they wanted. Where are the ancient fatties?
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Saturday June 13 2020, @12:16PM (2 children)
There's more unnecessary luxury food available nowadays, like chips and ice cream and such. The need to eat is one of the most primitive drives, probably billions of years old. In our society our intellect should be able to master such irrational behavior, but the current obesity situation is proof that this isn't working for many people.
There have always been obese people, just look up 'gout' (rich man's disease) to find them.
(Score: 5, Informative) by NickM on Saturday June 13 2020, @02:48PM (1 child)
Concentrated fructose is in part responsable, at least according to my doctor.
Last time I saw him, I told that I was permanently avoiding candy, icecream and the like since the day after I felt like had abused alcohol. His response was that if I had the willpower to do so it was a good thing since concentrated fructose is particularly hard on the liver (like the TFA noted) He then talked to me about a paper he read recently where the researchers were beginning to show¹ that the switch form glucose to concentrated fructose (mostly HFCS) that started mid 80s, early 90s, for purely economical reasons, was in part responsible for the obesity epidemic.
All that to says that it is not only that there is more energy dense junk food consumed but that most of the junk food available nowadays is objectively more harmful than what was available in the 70s.
1- the conclusion was the archetypal: more studies are needed (read we need more money and want to continue to do the same thing we are doing)
I a master of typographic, grammatical and miscellaneous errors !
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2020, @04:30PM
From 2009 the effects of sugar on society including the physiological effects on the human body:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM [youtube.com]
The effects of artificial sweeteners on insulin production: https://www.webmd.com/diet/news/20140917/artificial-sweeteners-blood-sugar#1 [webmd.com]
The role of insulin on fat production (and fat loss suppression): https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/9-fixes-for-weight-hormones#section1 [healthline.com]
Conclusions for me confirmed by experimentation:
1) Consume fructose and I will gain weight.
2) Avoid fructose but consume artificial sweeteners and I won't gain weight, but I won't lose weight either.
3) Avoid fructose and artificial sweeteners as much as possible and I will lose weight.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 14 2020, @04:37AM (1 child)
Ancient Fatties most certainly did exist. Fat was a sign of wealth. If you were fat, you were signalling to the people around you that you could afford extra food and relaxation. I believe from reading history, that merchants would often fatten up to prepare for a long journey too.
That, and the ancient world had people get drunk and stoned too. So eating with the munchies goes back to ancient times and beyond.
These days are not hard to figure out either. Look at Dazed and Confused, which is considered fairly representative of its time. Munchies, but still not a lot of fatties. The one take away though was that people were far more physically active. We have generations that socialized on the couch through technology, while still having the munchies. It really seems like the worst instincts and behaviors are well catered to by business. They figured out the same thing. More chips, ice cream, tasty processed foods.
When our technologies start enoucraging physical behavior and fitness again, we will see a change. Until then, I expect we will continue to get fatter on average.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 14 2020, @10:17PM
It's a social problem, but not necessarily the way you describe. When I was a kid I didn't have access to safe places for outdoor play and my parents were working too hard at their jobs to take us anywhere. So I spent a lot of time indoors, and my siblings and I were all fat.
My career was good enough that I had my kids in a daycare, where they got plenty of unstructured activity time. Only one of my four kids is fat - and she spent the first twelve years of her life with undiagnosed lactose intolerance. She sat around all day because she had terrible stomach aches. We finally figured out the lactose intolerance and cut dairy from her diet, and her activity level is starting to ramp up to match her siblings.
Inner city kids, kids who have to take care of a younger baby brother or sister, people who need to work two jobs to pay their bills, people with untreated health problems - they all have obstacles to healthy activity. I really think the best things society could do for obesity is make gym class (with gym teachers that aren't assholes) a mandatory part of every school day so kids who don't have an opportunity to exercise outside school are still active and cut the full time work week back to 35 hours.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Sunday June 14 2020, @04:37PM
>There's got to be more to it than just modern people eating like pigs.
There definitely is - we see the same fattening trend in lab animals with well-documented diets and lifestyles. Animals with the same diets, under the same conditions, are now getting fatter than in the past.
Environmental saturation with pseudo-estrogens is a likely contributor - from both birth control and plastics. And there's a cornucopia of other unnatural organic compounds permeating the environment as well - both synthetic, and things that synthetics have broken down or recombined into.