Healthy and unhealthy excess weight

The likelihood of metabolic disorders in obesity depends on the enzyme regulating the force of the inflammation.

Obesity is usually associated with increased blood sugar, abnormal blood pressure and other metabolic and cardiovascular disorders. However, not all overweight people suffer from diabetes and atherosclerosis – we can say that obesity is healthy and unhealthy.

But many biologists and doctors still refer to the concept of "healthy obesity" with doubt. It is believed that the absence of disease – is only a temporary phenomenon, and subsequently, any person with obesity will get the usual bouquet of diabetes, heart problems etc. With this consistent evidence from several papers, like the one that was recently published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.





In it researchers from the Korean Sungkyunkwan University describe the results of the examination of 14 000 people without visible metabolic disorders. Those of them who were overweight, noted the first signs of the emergence of atherosclerotic plaques. That is, metabolically healthy obese such people are actually not so healthy and can be the initial stage on the way to serious ailments.

However, evidence suggests that "good" and "bad" obesity really represent two different physiological conditions, and that "good" obesity is not necessarily a precursor to "bad". Esterbauer Harald (Harald Esterbauer) and several dozen of his colleagues from the Vienna medical University and other scientific centers of Austria and Germany tried to find out whether there are any molecular switches that turn healthy overweight unhealthy.

It is known that obesity and metabolic syndrome linked through inflammation, so that in the focus of researchers were the enzyme hemoxygenase-1, which is believed to suppress inflammation.

The level of enzyme measured in the blood, liver and adipose tissue in 44 people with obesity. Thus, those who have had obesity on health did not complain, the concentration of glucose in the blood, they were normal, and no signs of inflammation were not found. However, one parameter was significant differences: twenty-seven volunteers with overweight were observed the first signs of tissue insulin resistance, when cells fail to respond to the hormone and no longer needs to absorb glucose from the blood. Insulin resistance is considered the first symptom of type II diabetes. The remaining seventeen people had nothing to watch.

When those and others have compared the level of enzyme, it was found that people with the first signs of insulin resistance level of hemoxygenase-1 is almost two times higher. Experiments on mice confirmed the link between the enzyme and resistance to insulin: if mice gene hemoxygenase was turned off, even on a fatty diet, the cells sensitivity to insulin remained normal, and the level of inflammation was low. If the gene hemoxygenase artificially stimulated, even with a normal diet in mice there is a resistance to insulin.

That is, as they say in the Cell the authors, hemoxygenase-1 (HO-1) can serve as one of the earliest markers of metabolic disorders. These results are consistent with the data obtained Naukkarinen Jussi (Jussi Naukkarinen) and his colleagues from Helsinki University, who performed last year with the message about what healthy and unhealthy obesity differ in the number and level of inflammation.

On the other hand, remains to be seen how it linked the inflammatory reaction, the enzyme hemoxygenase-1 and the response of cells to insulin. Although it is believed that hemoxygenase-1 suppresses inflammation, we may not know all about it, and she can stimulate inflammation. There is another option: the level of hemoxygenase-1 is increased in response to inflammation and at the same time it has adverse effects on the sensitivity of cells to insulin.

Apparently, this enzyme separates healthy and unhealthy overweight. However, the authors specify that his level is full of people, even with normal insulin sensitivity was still higher than in lean. That is, the excess weight still is not "perfectly healthy", and the risk of diabetes with excess weight in any case increased.

 

Source: nkj.ru

Tags

See also

New and interesting