Tuesday 6 March 2012

Laser surgery to spot reduce fat

Came across
this article today in newspaper,

They are using laser treatment to make targeted fat cells spill their contents, their website explains how this works......

Paddles are attached to the specified area of the body and a low class laser is used to penetrate just under the skin to break down the underlying fat cells. When the laser hits the fat cells, pores form on the cells and they release water, glycerol and fatty acids. The fat cells reduce in size.

The lymphatic system then removes the glycerol and fatty acids through the venous system where they are processed in the same way as fatty foods that are digested. It is therefore crucial that clients exercise after treatment to metabolise the fatty acids.

The treatment does not affect any of the surrounding structures such as the skin, blood vessels or nerves.

They recommend 45 minutes of heavy cardio after treatment to burn the fats, which makes sense I suppose, but it does arise the question, if the fats re-enter the system as though they had just come from digestion, Do they go back to the cells they came from if you don't exercise? And if so, how is it that the fats "know" where to go?

Also, its been shown time and time again that exercise burns only insignificant amounts of substrates, how is it that only 45 minutes of exercise is sufficient enough to oxidise all this fat that's been forcefully ejected?

In the picture in the newspaper article, the before and after pictures are shown, you can see in the after picture her stomach looks slightly wrinkly, which is the classic sign of fat cell atrophy.

These fat cells will be very small and thus very insulin sensitive, what's to stop the fat therefore preferentially coming back to this area since these fat cells are relatively hyper-sensitive to insulin?

If the fat doesn't easily come back after treatment, then I think this is indeed good confirmation of the theory that fat cells do not passively uptake circulating fats for long-term triglyceride storage, but instead the process of triglyceride synthesis is activated and deliberate.

The fact that subcutaneous insulin injections cause localised fat cell hypertrophy is again further support for this theory, with it pointing to insulin as the culprit.



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