Obesity a hormonal problem, according to speaker at Ocular Nutrition Society meeting

SEATTLE — Obesity is caused by the inability to burn fat, which results from hormone resistance, according to Daniel Pompa, DC, at the Ocular Nutrition Society’s annual meeting. The day-long symposium was held here prior to the American Academy of Optometry’s annual meeting.

The body uses fat and sugar for energy, Pompa said, and healthy people have the ability to burn both.

“However, most Americans are stuck in sugar-burning mode,” he said. “You don’t have to be overweight to have this problem. They get cravings they cannot control because they have no hormonal ability to utilize fat for energy. A hormone called leptin controls food cravings and fat burning.”

Bad fats in the form of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) drive inflammation and oxidative stress, Pompa said. Inflammation of the cell blunts the hormone receptors, causing hormone resistance.

“This can happen with any hormone,” he said. “It can happen with thyroid, testosterone … the receptor gets blunted due to inflammation.”

Omega-3 fatty acids have been shown to increase the ability to burn fat for energy and decrease the amount of fat stored for energy, he continued.

“New studies show it achieves this through changing gene expression,” Pompa said. “It helps switch on genes involved in fatty acid oxidation and switch off those involved in fat storage.”

Increasing polyunsaturated fatty acids such as omega-6 conjugated linoleic acid and medium-chain triglycerides have been shown to downregulate gene expression for inflammation and upregulate gene expression for lipid metabolism, he said, adding that gene expression for leptin is also affected.

“We’ve been taught to stay away from fat, when, actually, fat can change gene expression,” Pompa told attendees. “It’s what’s needed at the cell membrane, where the hormone receptor is.

“The brain of the cell is in the cell membrane,” he continued, “more specifically, in the hormone receptors that communicate in the cell’s outer environment.”

Pompa does not believe total cholesterol is the problem. “It’s the oxidation of cholesterol,” he said. “More people have heart attacks with normal and low cholesterol today than with high cholesterol.”

Cholesterol needs a carrying molecule to circulate through the blood, Pompa explained.

“Think of a car as a carrying molecule (the particle), and the people in the car as the cholesterol,” he said. “What matters in the traffic jam is the number of cars, not the number of people in the cars. The number of people in the cars is total cholesterol; it’s irrelevant.”

In the Nurses’ Health Study, when good fats were added and trans fat reduced, type 2 diabetes was substantially reduced, Pompa said.

A Harvard study showed that diets high in saturated fat from meat and dairy improved diabetes threefold.

“This study does not surprise me,” Pompa said. “The epidemic is not in the hormones, it’s the hormones receptors.

“The hormone receptors ride on a lipid raft,” he continued. “The two fats that make up the majority of the raft are saturated fat and cholesterol. They’re the ones that stabilize the membrane. Cholesterol dictates the fluidity of how the membrane works.

“A cell that’s not fluid enough or too fluid is a problem,” he said. “Cholesterol dictates that perfect fluidity of a cell.”

Pompa said saturated fat is the missing fat in the American diet.

“Meat and dairy, the very fats we need, we are running from,” he said. “Vegetable oils are in breads, crackers and cookies; they turn into trans fats in the body.”