Researchers reporting in this month's issue of Trends in Endocrinology and Metabolism explain a novel purpose for the acquisition of fat: it may protect against metabolic syndrome:Gluttony, Sloth And The Metabolic Syndrome: A Roadmap To Lipotoxicity
The authors put forth that the body may be shuttling away excess fat into fat cells (adipose cells) before it can damage heart muscle or pancreatic cells - which it has been shown to do in rodents. Thus, obesity and insulin resistance may be viewed not as causing metabolic syndrome, but as methods the body employs to fend it off. (Cells that become resistant to insulin would be protective by slowing absorption of blood glucose, thus slowing production of lipid from that glucose.)
At some point, however, adipose cells become less efficient at taking up lipids making other cells vulnerable to their toxic effects. Getting fat is only temporarily protective.
If insulin resistance could ever be considered a good thing, that may alter thinking on how pharmaceuticals are employed. Would we want to lessen it? And removal of fat cells, liposuction, may in fact thwart the body's protective mechanisms by eliminating the source of hormones than manage lipids.
The Economist has a great article on their paper:
A Game of Consequences?
One of the scourges of modern life may have been profoundly misunderstood
