A Science study shows dormant fat stem cells wake up around age 40 and multiply rapidly in the visceral compartment, the dangerous fat surrounding your organs. The speaker uses zombie metaphors to explain why visceral fat explodes in middle age, and suggests learning and effort might help slow it down.
Nature can be really nasty. New research published in one of the top journals, Science, shows that your metabolism changes in middle age. Specifically, dormant precursors to fat cells wake up, causing an expansion in the number of fat cells, especially in visceral fat, the inflammatory sort of fat that sits around your internal organs and chokes your metabolic health like invasive weeds choking a garden. And this is really screwed up because generally these sorts of Stem cells slow their replication rate with age, but nature has a cruel sense of humor and has carved out this exception. It's like when you turn 40, these blasted visceral fat stem cells wake up like zombies rising from the grave. Instead of yelling "Brains!" though, they're yelling "Belly fat!" But the good news is you can put these fat stem cell zombies down if you just invest in a little more learning.
