Is it too many nachos and not enough gym time? Maybe, or perhaps your fat cells are on strike.
The battle of the bulge seems to grow more difficult (no pun intended) as you age. It could be that you move around less as you ‘mature’, or that the number of fast food joints around the corner always seems to increase with time. (In my neighborhood, it’s definitely a bit of both).
Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have found yet another, third, explanation as to why you gain weight as the years go by, however.
It has to do with your lipid turnover. This is the rate at which the fat in your fat cells is removed and stored. A new study found that when you age, your lipid turnover decreases, making it harder for you to lose weight. And much easier to gain it and keep it on, regardless of whether you eat more or less, or exercise more or less.
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“The results indicate for the first time that processes in our fat tissue regulate changes in body weight during ageing in a way that is independent of other factors,” says Peter Arner, professor at the Department of Medicine in Huddinge at Karolinska Institutet and one of the study’s main authors.
Researchers say they hope the discovery leads to new approaches to treating obesity. Which is a good thing.
Statistics from 2016 showed that nearly 40% of the adult American population qualifies as obese.
