Hmmm... this is an interesting thought. Is body fat a bad thing, or a good thing? We know now it's an organ like any other in your body, an endocrine organ and that it secretes hormones. Are they bad hormones? Well, not necessarily. Adeponectin does the following:

More here: http://nephropal.blogspot.com/2009/...diponectin.html

Actually, I *don't* know that much about the nature of fat, and have been wondering about that lately.

It's my understanding that fat cells can be full, empty, or somewhere in between of the actual fat, but never go away. So perhaps storage is only one of their functions--you mention several other things it does. So do these cells function better, or worse, or about the same whether they are full or not? Perhaps they carry out the same functional operations more effectively when they are *not* stuffed.

I'm also curious about the `old fat/new fat' notion. A lot of old ideas floating around, a lot of anecdotal stuff. Is there more that research has contributed to this understanding? I've read somewhere that all the fat in the cells are in circulation daily, that they go out and in this cellular swing-your-partner, and that's were the measurable triglycerides come from in blood tests.

But then comes the anecdotal--many of us have experienced the phenomenon of it being easier to lose recently-gained weight, but then come to these setpoints or get down to losing `old fat', to a weight where we have turned around in the past, and find that weight doesn't leave as easily.

So what's up with this? Is there such a thing as `old fat'? Is it chemically or physically different from `new fat'? Are fat cells cells that have functions independent of whether or not they are storing a lot of fat? What is the truth of that idea that we never lose fat cells (they just shrink) but that we can add more?

What is the nature of this stuff that we have wrestled with for so long? I'd really appreciate information if you have it to share.

Thanks.

That's actually not true. They know now that fat cells are like almost every other cell in the body with a life cycle. They do die.

The more fat cells we have, the less adiponectin we produce.

Patrick