Re-Post: 15 Belly-Fat Busters (#156‪)‬ Dr. Berkson's Best Health Radio Podcast

Go to https://drlindseyberkson.com/bigger-belly-fat-smaller-brain-size-shocking-link-mindfulness-15-sophisticated-action-steps/ for an in-depth article on this topic.
When it’s fat or real estate, it’s all about location, location, location!
Where your fat is located on your body, affects your overall health, your brain structure and function, and even your ability to be mindful… or not.
 
In this show you learn plenty of facts and fiction about fat cells.
 
Fat has more functions than we thought.
Fat stores excess calories so you can mobilize the fat stores for energy when you need them. Fat releases hormones that control metabolism (metabolism refers to how you burn calories as energy, or store calories as fat). Fat protects organs. Fat acts like Jekyll and Hyde depending on where it lives, what type of fat it is and how many of them are there. Hormone altering chemicals love fat.  Pollutants that mascaraed as hormones, can hide inside fats cells making them act physiologically nasty. Dr. Bruce Blumberg has labeled these endocrine disruptors that especially make for unhealthy fat cells, obesogens. Fat cares about location.
 
Not all fat is created equal. Where your fat “lives” modifies it’s function.
Visceral fat lives inside your gut surrounding your organs. Subcutaneous fat lies under your skin.  
Mounting evidence shows that fat lying deep within the abdomen is more perilous than the fat you can pinch with your fingers on your underarm, inner thigh and even on your belly just under your skin.
Fat that lives right underneath your skin, that feels relatively soft and that you can pinch between your fingers, is called subcutaneous fat.
In a healthy person, you should have a bit of fat under your skin that makes up a bout 90% of your fat stores.
The remaining 10% — called visceral or intra-abdominal fat —lies outside of your easy reach, beneath your firm abdominal wall. This fat fills the spaces surrounding abdominal organs like your liver, intestines, spleen and others. Visceral fact can also be found inside your omentum. This is an apron-like flap of tissue that lies under the belly muscles and blankets the intestines. The omentum gets harder and thicker as it fills with fat.
As women approach middle years, their proportion of fat to body weight increases often more than this happens in males.  Their belly enlarges. Fat storage starts to thicken the torso, fill up under the armpits, and thicken the waist, especially in the back.  
 
Even if you don't actually gain weight, your waistline can grow by inches as visceral fat pushes out against the abdominal wall.
 
Fat is biologically active. It releases hormones that affect our health.
Subcutaneous fat releases healthy hormones.
Subcutaneous fat releases the hormone leptin. When leptin is released in optimal amounts, it acts on the brain to suppress appetite (to help you not over eat) and even helps burn stored fat throughout the body so you don’t get fat. Subcutaneous fat also releases adiponectin. Adiponectin protects the body against diabetes and heart disease by regulating how the body processes fats and sugars. Adiponectin also is a powerful anti-inflammatory molecule, especially protecting the linings of blood vessels. Adiponectin is made a bit by visceral fat, too, as long as there isn’t too much of it. But adiponectin production falls severely as visceral fat volume increases. As people become fatter, they make less adiponectin. This increases their risk of diabetes, heart disease, dementia and the list keeps growing. Visceral fat cells, in comparison, secrete unhealthy molecules and hormones.
Visceral produces proteins called cytokines. These can trigger and maintain low-levels of unhealthy inflammation. Excessive inflammation is an independent risk factor for heart disease, type 2 diabetes, dementias and other serious chronic conditions. Visceral fat also produces a precursor to angiotensin, a protein t