How realistic is it to “sweat off” the pounds?

Scientists are still searching for the perfect cure for obesity – and this time they’ve come up with something interesting. Chinese researchers have discovered that if you sweat a lot, you can lose weight – literally. We tell you what is known about this method of weight loss.

nutritionist, founder of the clinic “Origitea”

Turning fat into sebum is a real procedure.

On the one hand, weight loss with the help of cytokines (peptide molecules) is an ingenious invention that will bring huge profits, but on the other hand, conservative methods are more reliable.

What does the science say?

While studying diabetes, scientists stumbled upon a mechanism by which you can lose weight. Initially, they wanted to find out if thymus stromal lymphopoietin (TSLP) could contribute to the treatment of type 2 diabetes. It is a cytokine, an immune system protein that is involved in allergic inflammation and affects energy metabolism. Since these cells accelerate metabolism, the researchers hypothesized that they could be used to avoid the effects of obesity.

The experiment was conducted on overweight mice that were injected with the cytokine TSLP. The result was unexpected: four weeks after the experiment, the mice began to lose weight.

During the study, the mice ate 20-30% more than usual and lost weight from 45 g to a healthy 25 g. Interestingly, the subjects lost visceral fat – the same fat that accumulates in the abdominal cavity around vital organs (intestines, liver, stomach, pancreas) and increases the risk of diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Blood glucose and insulin levels improved in these mice.

The weight loss itself occurred in a rather strange way: the animals sweated and secreted sebum, an oily substance produced by the sebaceous glands. At the same time, scientists did not limit the diet of rodents and found that the weight loss is associated with TSLP molecules – it is thanks to them mice literally “sweat fat”. The researchers themselves explain it this way: cytokine TSLP stimulates the immune system to release lipids through the skin. To verify the result, the authors shaved the mice and found that the hair of the subjects contained sebum.

Scientists are confident that the discovery will help in the fight against overweight in humans as well. The authors of the study concluded that TSLP reduces appetite and at the same time is not harmful to health. It is clear that you can not reverse obesity, but to increase the production of sebum and thereby accelerate the process of weight loss – quite. But this discovery, of course, requires further research.

Is it possible to lose weight by sweating?

According to nutritionist Mariyat Mukhina, fat turns into sebum thanks to a new type of peptides that transform fat into glucose. This type of therapy is already used in medicine, and this procedure is quite real. With its help, fat is perfectly “drowned” and actually eliminated from the body through the sebaceous glands. But for the normal functioning of the skin, you need to additionally use silicon.

Mariyat Mukhina

nutritionist, founder of the clinic “Origitea”

The transformation of fat into sebum is a cytokine mechanism. Now, for example, cytokine storm (inflammatory response) is being studied in connection with COVID-19, and it also contributes to weight loss. The point is that the body begins to spend resources and energy reserves of cells, and a person exposed to a cytokine storm quickly loses weight.