Fat cell adipocyte turnover study

(Bob M) #1

About 1.6 years for “Mean adipocyte lipid age”, meaning if you have PUFAs in your fat cells, it could take at least 18 months, if not double that, to get rid of those PUFAs. Ugh.

https://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/comments/S1550-4131(11)00389-5

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #2

So you are not talking about the lifetimes of the adipocytes, but rather the turnover of the fatty acids they store?

(Jack Bennett) #3

Yeah, the abstract says that the mean cell lifetime is ~6x the lifetime of the triglycerides contained therein.

(Bob M) #4

Yeah, they list both. I was more concerned with if you have PUFA-filled fat cells, how long does it take to replace the PUFAs? You can reduce your PUFAs to “zero” (I know,this isn’t possible), and it’s going to take a loooong while to actually remove them.

(Jack Bennett) #5

Yeah, this is why moving away from omega-6 fats and toward healthy fats is a long term goal. And this is quite independent from keto - you can eat a lousy keto diet full of “vegetable” oil, and you can eat a high-carb diet that is also full of healthy saturated and monounsaturated fasts.

(Bob M) #6

True, though I also have my doubts about monounsaturated fats. Of course, any fat has all three fats (saturated, MUFA, PUFA), but I don’t think high intake of MUFA is great.

Have you seen Brad’s latest MUFA posts? Here’s the third one:

I think in our modern environment, where chickens and pigs are probably overfilled with PUFAs, and where everything is based on oils, maybe we could take a step back from this? Unfortunately, it’s hard not to eat chicken and pork, and sometimes a salad with olive oil is good.

I have cut way back on bacon (a long time ago, when I realized I had no “off” switch for bacon), high fat pork (still eat ham and low fat pork; limit fatty pork), chicken (only as much as I can - my wife makes it a lot because it’s easy to cook), salads and anything made with oil (even “healthy” oils like olive oil).

And if it takes 1.5-3 years to change the composition of your fat, that’s a long time. Newbies here get upset if they stop losing weight for a day. I’ve been near the same weight for years, and it can be disconcerting to think that it might be because of my fat, and any change is several years in the future. Doesn’t stop me from keeping on the path, but it’s a bit challenging at time.