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Published online 5 May 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2008.800
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Fat cell numbers stay constant through adult life
Even serious weight loss doesn't reduce your overall number of fat-holding cells.
The number of fat cells in your body remains constant throughout your adult life, a new study has found. The discovery suggests that the process of weight gain may be fundamentally different in adults and in children.
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Would it be reasonable to assume that adding volume to existing low-volume fat cells is more efficient than trying to stuff more into already high-volume fat cells? If true, then once the cell population is essentially capped at 20 years old, having a high number of cells could predispose one to large fluctuations of overall body fat volume. And that would seem to correlate with stats on obese children.
Dose that mean that if I got fat at a young age, I could never get as thin as the one who got fat after 20? And I always don't think that the drug is a good option. Just like it is said above, it may cause a series of problems, side effects. I suppose that 'eat less, exercise more' is the best solution.
Are large fat cells metabolically different from small fat cells? If so, perhaps some of the negative consequences of high levels of body fat be due to large fat cells as well as abdominal vs cutaneous fat?