Dr. Ben Bikman

As much as there is the debate in two camps of what makes fat cells grow, it's just purely a matter of thermodynamics or no, it's purely a matter of endocrinology.

The truth is, of course, you actually have to have both.

You cannot under any circumstance make a fat cell get big unless you have both.

Just to put a fine point on that, if you have all the calories in the world... So I grow fat cells in petri dishes in my lab.

Right now, back at BYU, I got students growing fat cells in the incubator.

They are swimming in a culture medium filled with calories.

Everything the fat cell needs is all the calories that fat cell could ever want are around it right now.

And yet they're teeny little...

cells they're not getting big at all until we add one thing and the moment we add insulin into that culture now the fat cells start to get big if we check them six hours later there's a big lipid droplet six hours still later it's even bigger so in other words the fat cell knows what to do with the energy that it has access to a cell doesn't have any kind of intuitive intellect to think okay there's calories here or more accurately carbons that i can turn into triglycerides

And I'm going to take them in and store them.

But in the context of the body, the fat cell needs to know, am I playing nice with the rest of the body?

How stupid would it be if we got up and went, we go out on a jog outside, our fat cells are breaking down triglycerides as free fatty acids by activating lipolysis.

And yet at the same time, they're pulling them right back in to store them.

That would be stupid.

The fat cell wants to cooperate well and be part of the orchestra of the body.

And so it will be releasing its fat so that the muscle can take it up.

But if insulin were elevated – so insulin acts as the signal basically telling the fat cell when it's time to eat and when it's time to share.

So – and then let's – if we flip it – in fact, actually, I'll stay there for one more second.

We even see this.

Someone could say, well, Ben, that's just in fat cells.