What if you could inhale your way into a tight dress and exhale your way out of high blood sugar level and excess fat. Modern culture today is obsessed with easy ways to get rid of that extra pound. Yet, at the same time a the country is dealing with the major problem of obesity and all of the health risks that accompany it.
A thousand different popular diets have attempted to provide a solution, yet few have been truly successful.Chemical and biomolecular engineering, professor James Liao, associate professor of human genetics and pediatrics Katrina Dipple,and their research team at UCLA think that they have the solution. According to their paper in Cell Metabolism, They have been able to target genetic alterations that enable mice to convert fat into carbon dioxide and remain lean while eating the equivalent of a fast-food diet.
Their idea originated from observing bacteria and plants. They observed that seeds usually store a lot of fat. Upon germination, they convert the fat to sugar to grow.
Paralleling this natural pathway, they introduced genes for these enzymes from E. coli bacteria into cultured human cells and found that they increased the metabolism of fats in the cell. To their surprise, they found that the human cells converted the fat into carbon dioxde, instead of sugar as bacteria do.
Their research, although primitive, could provide a solution to a major health problem. According to the journal Health Affairs, overall obesity-related health spending reaches $147 billion in the U.S. Alleviating this spending could significantly lower current healthcare budget problems and remove the burden on the health industry.
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