One of the most important developments in the field of medicine is the realization that the fat cell is an endocrine organ, secreting hormones and other molecules that have far-reaching effects on other tissues in the human body.
Before researchers recognized that fat acts as an endocrine gland,
they thought that the main risk of visceral/belly fat was influencing the production of cholesterol by releasing free fatty acids into the bloodstream and liver.
We now know that there's far more to the story.
Visceral fat makes more of the proteins called cytokines, which can trigger low-level inflammation, a risk factor for heart disease and other chronic conditions.
It also produces a precursor to angiotensin, a protein that causes blood vessels to constrict and blood pressure to rise.
Therefore, we need to pay attention to what these molecules can cause in our bodies.
Belly fat is easy to gain, hard to lose, and harmful to human health.
A waist size over 35 inches for women and 40 inches for men increases our risk of developing diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.
Deep belly fat is a problem in healthy adults. It makes it harder for the body to use insulin well, which causes “insulin resistance”. This often leads to type 2 diabetes.
“Visceral fat” is the medical name for belly fat. Most of the fat in our bodies is stored just under the skin.
Visceral fat is stored deep in the belly, behind the abdominal wall, in the spaces between our internal organs.
This is deep within a cavity in the belly. It surrounds some of the vital organs of the body including the stomach, the liver, and the intestines.
In fact, this fat is very close to the liver. It is so close that the liver can turn it into cholesterol.
From there, this fat goes through the bloodstream. It may collect along the walls of the arteries. This leads the arteries to get hard and narrow.
The body stores a lot more visceral fat as we age. As we age, our muscle coordination decreases.
This interferes with digestion efficiency. The older we get, the more visceral fat we will normally have.
Metabolism slows in older age which contributes to the caloric surplus.
The food supply nowadays makes it very easy to overeat because processed foods are designed to be highly addictive.
The fat accumulates everywhere, but the visceral fat is MUCH harder to lose because it is specially protected.
Visceral fat is the LAST to go because it has a lot of alpha-2 receptors.
The αlfa-2-receptors are involved in the inhibition of fatty acid mobilization from fat tissue.
The net lipid mobilization depends on the balance between the stimulatory and the inhibitory effects of chemicals on beta and αlfa receptors, respectively.
Sadly, it's been scientifically proven that fat around our abdomen is even harder to shift than fat on other areas of our body.
Essentially, fat around the belly occurs because of the same reason we get fat build-up anywhere on our body; when we’re consuming more energy than the body is using.
To put it simply: it’s more difficult to shift belly fat because it has a higher amount of fat cells that don’t respond as easily to the fat-breakdown process.
Burning fat" is a two-part procedure: Launching power from fat shops into the blood (lipolysis). Cells taking those particles in as well as using them (oxidation).
This primary step, lipolysis or fat breakdown, is activated by chemicals such as adrenaline and noradrenaline.
As soon as these chemicals remain in our blood, they attach to "receptors" on fat cells, which creates them to release some of their energy.
These fatty acids are then utilized as fuel by various kinds of cells in the body, including muscle cells.
Well-trained muscle is specifically efficient at burning fats, which is why it's less complicated to lose fat when we have a significant amount of muscle.
Currently, in lower sections of the body where we reach the distinction between locations of the body where fat stores appear to be "stubborn," like the belly, versus other areas of the body where fat dissolves conveniently.
The critical distinction between "stubborn" stomach fat and "regular" fat is that it has a high quantity of fat cells where adrenaline and noradrenaline receptors that direct fat breakdown.
You see, fat cells have two standard types of adrenaline and noradrenaline receptors: alpha and beta receptors.
The physiology gets rather complicated, but the long tale short is beta-receptors accelerate lipolysis, and also alpha-receptors disrupt it.
What this suggests are fat cells that have even more beta-receptors than alpha-receptors are reasonably simple to set in motion,
they respond positively to adrenaline and noradrenaline, whereas fat cells that have more alpha-receptors than beta are not, they don't respond favorably to these receptors.
This is the standard trouble with stubborn belly fat, as well as all various other kinds of "persistent fat"
the ratio in between beta and also alpha-receptors is massively heavy towards alpha, which indicates that these chemicals cannot activate lipid breakdown as quickly.
Therefore, when we're losing fat, we see immediate reductions in fat cells with a lot of beta-receptors, however little change in fat cells with a multitude of alpha-receptors.
Here are some tips for overcoming bell fats.
As important as a healthy diet is for weight loss, simply switching up our eating habits probably won’t lead to a significant decrease in belly fat.
To lose visceral fat, you must lose fat overall. We need at least 12 hours without food which is a good way to burn belly fat since it is less protected under those conditions.
But this is not realistic. Diet alone is not enough to reduce deep belly fat.
We are required to do strength training as it will raise the muscular tissue mass, which will certainly help the body melt much more fat.
We are required to increase your exercises. People who performed high-intensity interval training lost a lot more belly fat than those that executed a low-intensity workout.
This is because high-intensity workouts help us burn a lot more calories and also make us place all our body pressure right into it.
There's this thing called leptin which we should also talk about.
It’s been FREQUENTLY falsely referenced as our “obesity hormone” or our “fat hormone”
Leptin has gained such fame over the years. …it is NOT our obesity hormone.
Leptin is our “fullness hormone” which regulates our energy balance by inhibiting hunger.
Now I’ll clarify it in everyday language: So when people diet, their cells begin to lose fat and that decreases the amount of leptin produced.
But if it goes below their personal leptin threshold, their brain senses starvation and sends the signal to our brain that we don’t have enough energy onboard captain, eat more!
If your leptin is high, you’re carrying a lot of body fat but your brain just can’t see it.
Our brain is actually starved while our body is obese. Obesity is actually brain starvation.
So the answer to the question, Why is belly fat so hard to lose especially in adults? It’s that we all have a leptin floor, the problem is we don’t have a leptin ceiling.
The good news is that our body fat set-point can be reprogrammed and our leptin sensitivity can be reset by a healthy diet and intense exercise.
To conclude, I must say that our body regards belly fat as if it is a new organ added to our body.
Fat tissue contains numerous nerve cells and blood vessels, just like any other organ.
Therefore our body protects it just like it protect our heart, our liver, and other organs.
But in terms of number, blood vessels in the fat tissue are relatively inadequate, meaning that it is weak.
That is why we can convince our body to send away this unwanted organ.
Thanks for watching!