Have you ever heard about visceral fat? It’s the kind of fat that wraps around your organs, deep inside your belly. Unlike the fat under your skin, this stuff is super active in your body.
Functional medicine providers care about this especially when people become obese, because this visceral fat can cause a lot of trouble by creating oxidative stress. This stress can damage DNA, which leads to old or damaged cells hanging around when they should be gone. These lingering cells, called senescent cells, can make things worse by releasing inflammatory chemicals.
Scientists use special markers to find these senescent cells. One marker is called senescence-associated β-galactosidase (SA-β-gal), and another is the expression of the p16 gene. Both of these are like red flags saying, “Hey, there are old cells here causing problems!”
Now, let’s talk about a recent study that’s pretty exciting. In this study, 40 obese adults who were waiting for bariatric surgery got split into two groups. One group took 600 mg of something called N-acetylcysteine (NAC) every day for four weeks before their surgery. The other group just got a placebo, which is like a sugar pill with no medicine in it.
When the doctors did the surgery, they took samples of the patients’ visceral fat to look for those red flags we talked about earlier. They also checked the patients’ blood for signs of inflammation and how well their bodies handled sugar. They even measured things like waist size, weight, and body mass index at the start and end of the study.
Here’s where it gets cool: the group that took NAC had a big drop in both SA-β-gal activity and p16 gene expression in their fat samples. That means there were fewer of those troublesome senescent cells. Plus, their blood tests showed lower levels of inflammation and better control of blood sugar. Their bodies became better at using insulin, which is super important for keeping blood sugar levels healthy. However, there weren’t any changes in their cholesterol levels or body measurements.
So what does all this mean? Well, it looks like NAC could be a helpful tool for managing some of the problems caused by belly fat in obesity. It’s not a magic pill for weight loss, but it might help reduce some of the risks that come with having too much visceral fat.
Remember, always talk to your certified functional medicine doctor before starting any new supplement, especially if you have health issues or are waiting for surgery. But it’s exciting to see science finding new ways to tackle health problems, isn’t it?
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