Studies Show Certain Foods Reduce Damage from Obesity
With obesity rates in the US skyrocketing, the cost is becoming alarming, in both health and financial terms. Obesity is a causal factor in just about every other disease, and does an astounding amount of damage to the body on its own, let alone through concomitant effects. It simply has to be addressed if we want to improve our overall systemic well-being. However, losing weight is not the only solution to take because it does nothing to address the damage done by a range of inflammation caused by fat cells.
The problem seems to derive from the chronic levels of low-grade inflammation. On a daily basis, cell are being damaged and the aging process is being accelerated. Obese people are literally degenerating at a faster rate than normal and this causes system-wide effects, including mental diseases, heart diseases, stroke, cancer and diabetes (J. Agric Food Chem; Feb 2008.) Moreover, obesity prevents the body from creating sufficient antibodies to defend against invading bacteria and virii, which sends us down a direct path to poor health and sickness.
What's even worse is that it seems that the inflammatory cells travel into the hypothalamus and prevent leptin and ghrelin uptake, which signal to the brain that you are full and should stop eating. The result is the body's ability to regulate weight and metabolism is now thrown off. Researchers believe it is a hypothalamic mechanism, but even without knowing the exact cause, what we do know that obesity reinforces overeating, and increased fat storage, so it can be a vicious cycle downwards.
As we said, dealing with obesity may center around losing weight, but this won't solve the damaging effects already done. Because of the type of impact of these fat cells, a powerful arrow in the restorative quiver turns out to be anthocyanin-rich berries. We have various posts about the value of these flavonoids that provide the color to berries. Research shows these compounds will help deal with the damaging effects of being overweight, most remarkably by reducing the size of fat cells.
Berries have a wide range of beneficial effects, including the ability to limit the damage of fat cells, improve metabolism and fat-conversion, insulin sensitivity, and even cause the more dangerous and intransigent white fat cells to take on characteristics of healthier brown fat cells (Nutrients; Oct 2017.) One study showed that berries enhance the activation of AMPK, an energy regulator that governs youthful cellular metabolic function (J Nutr Biochem; May 2018.)
This is great news for anyone looking to improve their health while losing weight. Benefits extended to enhancing memory, improving diabetes and healing some of its damaging effects, bolstering heart health, healing liver damage, and removing accumulated fat in the liver which leads to diseases. By addressing systemic inflammation, anthocyanins in berries are helping fix all sorts of harmful issues.
The studies focused on a range of berries, including blue and blackberries, black currants, bilberry, acai, strawberries, aronia, and cherries (Medicine; May 2015). It became clear that not only were a range of berries helpful, but that they were especially beneficial when taken together. The main problem is that the required amount was over a pound of berries a day, and given their seasonal nature, their sugar content, and their cost, it would be difficult to incorporate them into a daily diet. Fortunately, research showed that berry extracts were not only just as beneficial, but in some cases were actually better (Crit Rev Food Sci Nutr; May 2014.)
This means that berry supplements are an excellent alternative if you don't want to consume the requisite amount in fruits. They are not only health effective, but cost effective, and easy to take daily.
Resveratrol helps repair cell damage from obesity.
Red wine anthocyanins, found in resveratrol, were equally helpful in addressing damage from obesity and were found to increase the antioxidant capacity of blood (J Nutr Biochem; July 2009.) The concentrations of the beneficial compounds are unusually high in resveratrol, which is why is has been so heralded for repairing damage and rebuilding a healthy immune system. For a complete deep dive into the benefits of resveratrol, check out this post.
Citrus fruits show positive effects on cell damage repair.
Obesity causes increased cell damage markers by as much as 80 percent in the blood in some studies. Citrus fruits given to animal test subjects contained flavanones like eriocitrin and hesperidin, had many beneficial effects on cell damage, especially in the liver, compared with mice not given citrus. These flavanone compounds also reduced fat accumulation in the liver and cell damage in the blood by roughly 48 percent. It appears that lowering oxidative stress is responsible for many of the positive effects. (American Chemical Society. Citrus Fruits Could Help Prevent Obesity-Related Heart Disease, Liver disease, Diabetes; 2016 Presentation).
Omega 3's are beneficial for rebuilding healthy cells.
Finally, a study of short and long-chain omega fatty acid chains found them to be of significant benefit to damaged cells. Omega 3's reduce cellular inflammation, modulate some negative effects of excessive fat storage, and modulate "the expression of genes in metabolic pathways...which shift metabolism toward increased fat oxidation, energy expenditure and reduced fat deposition" (Military Medicine; 179, 2014). Eating fatty fish like tuna, salmon, sardines, or mackerel can have significant benefit, both for weight loss, and for cellular damage repair.
What research is clearly telling us is that we must address the effects of obesity as well as the weight issue itself. It is not enough to just lose weight. Keeping your focus on health-boosting foods and supplements that can mitigate the ongoing damage of excess fat. Getting the right foods into your diet is the simplest and most effective way of dealing with an issue that affects so many people.
