Friday, March 25, 2011

Stem Cells To Bone or Fat?

Interesting study, exploring what happens to a stem cell and why.

Don’t sit still more than you need to, Dr. Rubin said, and don’t let your children loll about either. “One of the concerns raised” by these experiments, she said, “is that if you make fat cells when you’re young, then you’ve lost any opportunity to have that particular cell be bone,” and the fat cell will remain just that, for life.
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/02/phys-ed-more-bone-and-less-fat-through-exercise/

While there's no question that genetic expression is affected by what we do, what we eat, and how much we do it, I wouldn't worry too much about the "once a fat cell always a fat cell" idea.  We've seen too many folks who can undo almost any amount of obesity to believe that such a thing is predetermined.  In general, though, the concept is right on - beyond the benefit you get from today from what you eat and how you exercise, you are setting "good/bad" switches in the expression of your genes which will affect your tomorrows.

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