Cosmetic Surgery Info
Some Straight Talk About Fat Cells
We read that fat cells only grow during certain times in our lives, during the first year of life and at puberty. The truth is that fat cells can be created by our bodies even when we become adults. Whenever you gain weight, you add to your store house of fat cells. Once those fat cells are made, they don’t diet away. They remain with you. When you get liposuction surgery, some of those fat cells are taken out. Those fat cells that are taken out won’t come back obviously, just like your body won’t grow another appendix. But, if you gain more weight following liposuction, you will create more fat cells to replace those that were taken out by liposuction.
Fat cells grow as they absorb fat. When they become about three times their original size, they divide like an amoeba and make new fat cells. Each person’s rate of fat cell division is different, dependent on the person. If you diet and exercise, your fat cells can shrink, but they won’t go away. The problem then is if you are obese and diet, your fat cells have shrunk but are always there waiting for you to fill them.
In a recent study done at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston Salem, North Carolina, results were compared between diet and exercise in relationship to cell shrinkage. The study showed that exercise was more effective in shrinking fat cells around the waist than diet. The two groups studied both lost the same about of body fat while the group that exercised managed to shrink their fat cells and the group that didn’t exercise lost weight but kept their fat cells in the enlarged shape.
This study is useful for those who are thinking about liposuction surgery as a means of getting rid of fat cells that won’t come back. It is even a comment made by some very famous plastic surgeons. The fact is that those fat cells that are removed won’t come back, but, if the patient gains weight, the fat cells that are left will grow and eventually multiply. In the meantime, if a liposuction patient is not seriously dieting and exercising the results of the lipo cosmetic surgery will not be noticeable six months after the surgery if he gains more than 30 pounds of fat.