IainDaniel

Any one have any data on this?

Showing where you store your fat is an indication of certain hormonal imbalances, or is it just bunk?

Obstacles don't have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don't turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.

Michael Jordan

KelJu

I remember reading that we are born with a composition of fat sells throughout our body, and nothing can change that. Even if you have liposuction around your mid section, your body will put it back within a few years so that you have the genetically predetermined amount of fat cells in that area of the body. I don't have time to find links, but it is basic physiological knowledge.

My guess is no, but I have no data to back it up.

Built

Oh, I don't think it's bunk. For example, when women go on oral contraceptives they pack on extra fat on the lower body, where there are more alpha-2 receptors. Also, as women lean out, we retain proportionally more of our lower body than upper body fat: in other words, we become more "gynoid" in our fat-pattern distribution as we lean out. This is wonderful news for "apples", because when they lean out, they finally get a shape. For "pears", this is very bad news, since we were gynoid to begin with. We lean out and this situation becomes WORSE. For those of us unlucky enough to have this problem, hormonal intervention and lipo are pretty much our only choices. Note that OC exacerbates this condition in several ways: SHBG is elevated as high as four-fold, binding up what little testosterone we have. With less test, we have less DHT, a natural aromatase inhibitor. Our estrogen now goes through the roof with nothing to oppose it.

Also, as people (male and female) get fatter, we produce more estrogen since peripheral estrogen production arises from the aromatase that resides in fatty tissue. Since there is an interaction between alpha receptors and estrogen, this influences the pattern in which we gain. This effect is so pronounced that there is now research to support bra size and risk of type II diabetes.

Cortisol - now that's outside of my knowledge base, but I have read of certain propensities for belly-fat in this regard.

Witchblade

I've also read relatively high amounts of belly fat and high cortisol levels are correlated. I think it was Polliquin or Waterbury so I wouldn't bet my life on it.

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IainDaniel

Was watching a show, and they were talking about fat distibution.

ie Fat on the back and insulin sensitivity.

Fat in the thighs and Testosterone.

Abdominal Fat and Coritsol, stress and sleep issues.

I just can't find anything further on the topic.

Obstacles don't have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don't turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.

Michael Jordan

Built

Go to pubmed and look at bodyfat distribution and sex change, weight loss, HRT etc.

cpush

any more info on this?

Built

Testosterone aromatizes in peripheral adipose. The fatter your thighs are, the more local aromatase.

At least, that's my first thought. When I first went on HRT, I aromatized it and blew up like a balloon. Progesterone settled this RIGHT down.

Nurse_Pup

When you start thinking about bodyfat distribution, receptor subtype becomes huge. Consider abdominal fat and cortisol. In most people abdominal fat is dominated by beta-2 receptors, hence why men see so much success with beta agonists like ephedrine. Now lets take it further, ephedrine was intended as a bronchodilator, because your lungs are beta-2 receptor dominant. What is cortisol? Its a glucocorticoid that acts as an antiinflammatory in lung tissue along with it being the whore of catabolism. Stress is typically inflammatory, cortisol goes up, the abdomen, like the lungs is littered with beta-2 receptors, doesn't take long for those receptors to get saturated, the added catabolism inhibits the nutrient partitioning effects of increased skeletal muscle, the immunosuppressive effects of the cortisol makes the cells even more likely to increase glucose uptake in abdominal adipose tissue because metabolic efficiency declines.

Nurse_Pup

Guthormones Adipokines Neuropeptides and the cause of Obesity

...this article is kickass at describing the various mechanisms by which we end up with adiposity in both subcutaneous and visceral adipose tissue.