insulin resistance

Today marked the official start of the Experimental Biology meeting for the American Physiological Society! The highest award the society offers a scientist is named in honor of Dr. Walter B Cannon, the physiologist (and 6th President of the society) who came up with the term 'homeostasis' in his 1930 book The Wisdom of the Body. This year's award recipient is Dr. Amira Klip from the University of Toronto. In her presentation she described her research on how poor nutrition can activate the immune system to cause insulin resistance in muscle. Fascinating! This was a grand way to kick-off the…
The Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology section held their Scholander Poster competition for young comparative physiologists today! It was exciting to see all of the students present their work. Here are some of the highlights: Raffaele Pilla, Dominic P, D'Agostino, Carol S. Landon, and Jay B. Dean from Molecular Pharmacology and Physiology, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL. These researchers demonstrated that a ketone body, often thought of as waste products resulting from the use of fats for energy, can have protective effects against seizures caused by exposure to hyperbaric…
By now, readers of Obesity Panacea have hopefully learned that excess weight is not directly predictive of health risk, and that excess fat mass is not in itself unhealthy. Recall that approximately 30% of individuals who are classified as obese by their body weight turn out to be metabolically healthy, and in fact seem not to get much metabolic benefit (or may even get worse) when they lose weight. Also consider that individuals who have NO fat tissue (e.g. lipodystrophy) have extremely elevated metabolic risk factors, meanwhile others who can apparently indefinitely grow more fat mass (…