"Study - Different Genes Affect Weight And Where Fat Is Stored" - Max Gomez
We were always taught that a calorie does the same thing to everyone. Not so. It turns out we have genes that affect our overall weight and another set that determine where we store our fat. Knowing those genes means doctors may actually be able to change our type and improve our health. Nadav Madanes isn’t what you’d call obese or even all that overweight, but his doctor said he’s pre-diabetic and needs to lose weight, especially in the common male problem area in the stomach. Dori Arad, PhD, RDN, director of the Mount Sinai PhysioLab at Mount Sinai St. Luke’s, said that belly fat is a bigger health risk. “It’s around your pancreas. It’s around your liver. It’s around your heart. It makes those organs not function very well,” he said. Ruth Loos, PhD, director of the genetics of obesity and related metabolic traits program at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, has found the genes that determine where you store your fat. She’s one of the authors of a major study in Nature Genetics that examined the genomes of more than 300,000 people and identified the variants that, in general, tend to make men apple-shaped and women pear-shaped.
—Dori Arad, PhD, RDN, Certified Exercise Physiologist, Director, Mount Sinai PhysioLab, Mount Sinai St. Luke's
—Ruth Loos, PhD, Professor, Environmental Medicine and Public Health, Director, The Genetics of Obesity and Related Metabolic Traits Program, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai