A study reveals that women who tend to accumulate fat around their thighs, hips, and buttocks may have additional protection against dementia and strokes.
Subcutaneous fat, which rests beneath the skin and generates cellulite, protects against inflammation-related illnesses, including heart disease, according to mouse studies.
Researchers discovered that female mice with high quantities of this type of fat had less brain inflammation than their male counterparts. In contrast, when the ladies underwent liposuction, their inflammation levels skyrocketed.
Experts are uncertain as to why subcutaneous fat appears to have a protective fat, but earlier study has connected it to estrogen, which is a natural anti-inflammatory.
The findings do not recommend, however, that women should intentionally gain weight, given that obesity increases the risk of chronic diseases such as dementia, strokes, and heart disease.
Men are more likely to deposit visceral fat around their organs, which causes the dreaded “beer belly.”
According to the authors of a recent study, this explains in part why males have a substantially higher risk for inflammation-related conditions such as heart attack and stroke than premenopausal women.
Women produce less estrogen after menopause and begin to retain visceral fat rather than subcutaneous fat. After undergoing this change, their risk of chronic inflammation-related diseases increases.
In the most recent study, published in Diabetes, scientists at Augusta University in Georgia examined increases in the quantity and distribution of fat tissue in male and female rats.
In addition, they examined the levels of sex hormones and brain inflammation at various time intervals as the subjects gained weight on a high-fat diet.
Since similar to humans, obese female mice tend to have more subcutaneous fat and less visceral fat than male mice, the researchers reasoned that the unique fat patterns may be a crucial factor in the protection against inflammation that females experience before menopause.
As predicted, male rodents gained more visceral fat while females gained more subcutaneous fat. Additionally, men developed higher brain inflammation than women.
The researchers then assessed the effects of the high-fat diet, which is known to cause systemic inflammation, on mice of both sexes that had had liposuction-like surgery to remove subcutaneous fat.
They did not remove the ovaries or otherwise directly interfere with normal estrogen levels.
The decrease of subcutaneous fat enhanced brain inflammation in females without altering their estrogen or other sex hormone levels.
Dr. Stranahan stated, “When we removed subcutaneous fat from the equation, the brains of females began to demonstrate inflammation similar to that of males, and females accumulated more visceral fat.”
The findings indicate, according to Dr. Stranahan, that more than estrogen is at play, adding, ‘When people think about protection in women, their first idea is estrogen.
“However, we must abandon the notion that every sex difference is caused by hormone variances and hormone exposure.”
To be able to treat sex differences and recognize the role that sex plays in varying clinical outcomes, we must delve more thoroughly into the fundamental mechanisms driving sex differences.
The study focused on the hippocampus and hypothalamus to capture inflammation in the brain.
The hippocampus plays a significant role in learning and memory, whereas the hypothalamus regulates hormones and maintains the body’s homeostatic equilibrium.
According to Dr. Stranahan, the loss of subcutaneous fat could have radically different effects on different regions of the brain, which should be researched.
