There could be a medical therapy that could let people eat anything they wanted without gaining weight, the Salt Lake Tribune reported.
In a new study, researchers prevented mice from gaining weight or developing diabetes despite an unhealthy diet by blocking a certain critical lipid at the cellular level.
The lipid is called ceramide, and it's at the root of a cellular pathway that disrupts metabolism, BYU biologist Benjamin Bikman told the Salt Lake Tribune.
For a study published recently online in Biochemical Journal, Bikman and other researchers fed two sets of mice high-fat, high-sugar diet for 12 weeks. They supplemented one group's with myriocin, an amino acid that inhibits ceramide.
The first set of mice gained weight and became diabetic, while the myriocin group did not - despite having the same bad diet.
Researchers discovered that poor dietary habits cause an accumulation of ceramides, which leads to insulin resistance. That in turn can cause obesity and diabetes or other diseases. The cause is found in how they affect mitochondria in our cells.
"Think of the cell as a city and mitochondria as its power plant," Bikman told the Daily Herald. "The mitochondria break nutrients down and get energy for the body to work."
Ceramides are essential for human existence, but too much of the lipid could cause obesity, which can lead to health problems. It can also trigger an early death. The lipid slows metabolism by altering the physical form of the cells' mitochondria, disrupting cell's ability to respond to insulin and take up sugar from the blood.
"If you don't have functioning mitochondria, you can't use fat for fuel," Bikman said.
According to Bikman, ceramide also changes how the cells can use both sugars and fats for fuel. Those changes lead to high insulin in the blood, and ultimately fat build up. And as obesity develops and worsens, ceramide production only increases, making it both a cause and a consequence.
"If we can prevent this shape-changing effect from happening in the cells by stifling the ceramide, we can prevent insulin resistance," said doctoral student and co-author Melissa Smith in a statement.
Though scientists have known about the tiny lipids called ceramides for decades, Bikman is one of only a few looking at them in the context of metabolism.
