Research

Hormonal

Excessive lipolysis from visceral adipose tissue drives lipotoxicity and insulin resistance by flooding the liver with free fatty acids, leading to ectopic fat accumulation and metabolic dysfunction.

Focus on improving insulin sensitivity rather than just cutting dietary fat. Visceral fat is metabolically active and releases fatty acids that clog up your liver and muscles, causing insulin resistance. Reducing visceral fat through exercise and metabolic health improvements can lower this harmful fatty acid overflow.

GoodSupportsHIGH confidence
Excessive accumulation of lipids can lead to lipotoxicity, cell dysfunction and alteration in metabolic pathways... The causes for lipotoxicity are not only a high fat diet but also excessive lipolysis... In presence of either high fat and/or carbohydrate intake, lipogenesis is stimulated and excess fat is stored as triglycerides... During fasting excess plasma free fatty acids (FFA), mainly released by the subcutaneous fat, accumulate in non-adipose tissues (e.g., liver, heart, pancreas and muscle) as triglycerides (TG), and can promote cell dysfunction and death
Chiara Saponaro et al. · Nutrients · 2015

Why this rating

This is a review paper citing multiple human studies and mechanistic data, establishing a strong consensus on the link between lipolysis, FFA flux, and insulin resistance.

Source

The Subtle Balance between Lipolysis and Lipogenesis: A Critical Point in Metabolic Homeostasis

Chiara Saponaro et al. · Nutrients · 2015

DOI 10.3390/nu7115475

narrative_reviewCited 519×
Read the paper
DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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