Fat is Active?

As a society, most people are trained to look at fat as the enemy. Billions of dollars are spent in the United States on fitness plans, meal plans, clothing, and gadget devices to make us look slim. Inherently, fat is seen as this unproductive and unwanted substance that only takes up space in our bodies. Scientists thought the same thing until more recently when research has proven that fat is actually high metabolically active and plays a role in bodily functions.

Fat, or adipose tissue, is considered an organ since it has a network of nerves, immune, and stromovascular cells that respond with the rest of the body. Fat doesn't just receive signals from places like the brain, it produces its own hormones which have significance for normal functions in the body. Due to this, fat is considered an endocrine organ which is an organ that is responsible for hormones and metabolism in the body. Other endocrine organs include the adrenal glands, thymus, and ovaries/testicles.

Another important benefit of fat is that there are actually stem cells in fat! That's right - actual, amazingly your own stem cells! We have taken advantage of this benefit by utilizing body fat, for harvesting our stem cells for our therapeutic modalities. A minimal amount of patient fat is used Some of the patient fat is taken We take some of your own fat, harvest the stem cells from them, and inject them back into your body where you need it the most.

So what you might have previously thought of as an unwanted feature of your body was the feature of you don't want the most, might actually be the key to decreasing your pain, increasing your range of motion, and overall improving your quality of life! Sometimes, the solution to our problems is right under our noses.

Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3648822/