Here's What's Hiding in Your Fat Cells (The Secret That's Suppressing Weight Loss!)

Shawn Stevenson (0:00)

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Most people think that body fat is merely stored calories, but there is more going on inside of your fat cells than you can imagine. A shocking study cited in the journal Comprehensive Physiology has revealed that toxins are now rapidly accumulating in human fat tissue. The study, titled Adipose Tissue as a Site of Toxin Accumulation, details how persistent organic pollutants or POPs, including pesticides, industrial chemicals, flame retardants, and other fat soluble compounds can accumulate in human fat tissue over time. And why is this so alarming? Well, it's the sheer amount that the average person is exposed to on a daily basis in our modern society. Hundreds of billions of pounds of these newly invented chemicals are circulating in our environment every single year. And here's the rub, they love our fat cells. Let me ask you a question. You've probably heard of something called a phobia. A phobia is an intense and sometimes even irrational fear of something, but it's an intense fear of something. So if somebody has, say, arachnophobia, they're intensely afraid of spiders or acrophobia, which is an intense fear of heights. Now, this is when things are really extreme on one end, but on the other end of that spectrum, there's something called a phelia. It's the opposite of a phobia. A phelia is a deep, intense, sometimes irrational love of something. So if somebody has arachnophilia, this means that they love spiders, all right? And there are some respectfully weird people out there that love their eight-legged critters. In the same vein, there can be acrophilia, which is a love of heights. Or I have anphelia. I love my wife Anne, sometimes irrationally. Now, I'm saying all of this to say that a huge percentage of these newly invented chemicals that we're exposed to on a daily basis have something called lipophilia. They're lipophilic in nature. They are attracted to our fat cells, literally like a magnet. And the issue that we all need to understand today is that this situation is largely inescapable. We're all living in this glorified snow globe together. And we've got to have a new approach, because these things are definitely, as you're going to discover today, impacting our metabolism in ways that we're just now starting to discover. In that study, published in Comprehensive Physiology, the researchers from the University of Kentucky stated, quote, bioaccumulation in expanded adipose tissue can exert inflammatory actions that could contribute to the development of insulin resistance, and low-level persistent organic pollutant exposures may contribute to the development of diabetes and other inflammatory-related conditions. Unquote. Wait, this is crazy. Nobody is talking about the toxins, the chemical pollutants that we're exposed to on a day-to-day basis in our environment are contributing to our exceedingly high levels of insulin resistance, diabetes, and even obesity. It's not just about the calories and the food that we're eating. These chemicals and this exposure interacting with our cells is changing the way that our metabolisms work, and we've got to do something about it. Again, most people are not educated about the fact that these toxins in our environment can contribute to diabetes and a host of chronic diseases, including obesity. In fact, many of these toxins are well established to be obesogens. Obesogens are obesity causing agents that increase our body fat independent of the amount of calories we consume. In other words, obesogens supersede how our body processes caloric energy, making you gain weight faster and have a more challenging time losing weight, even in a caloric deficit. They are lying to us about weight loss today. It is different. It is harder to lose weight today than it's ever been. It is easier to gain weight than it's ever been. And this is, again, independent of the calories that we're consuming. Yes, the calories matter, but there is a bigger picture that we need to pay attention to. And that's what today is all about. Let's take thylates, for example. These chemicals are ubiquitous in our modern environment. Thylates are chemicals used to make plastics more flexible and durable. They're also used heavily in food packaging and in many personal care products as well. They're used in personal care products as solvents to help fragrances to last longer. They also assist in allowing topical products like lotions and cosmetics to adhere and to penetrate the skin more effectively. So again, thylates are pretty much ubiquitous in our environment today.

And here is a crazy study that you need to know about. A multi-pollutant study titled Thylate Exposure is Associated with More Rapid Body Fat Gain in Midlife Women was conducted by the University of Michigan School of Public Health. And it found that thylates were explicitly associated with more rapid increases in body fat in women. With this conversation around thylates, and this is just one of these compounds, we've got to understand that it's not just about the food that we eat, the personal care products that we use.