Image Source: Mayo Clinic INTRODUCTION An hypothesis was offered roughly a decade ago that osteoporosis might be considered the obesity of the bone.(1) The reason I find this hypothesis so engaging and interesting is that because for years obesity and overweight were considered to be protective against osteoporosis. Today’s blog will be focused on a more recent paper(2) that reviews obesity and osteoporosis as well as the hypothesis that rather than protective against osteopo

INTRODUCTION In this series on the impact of obesity upon stem cells, we have reviewed a bit of data on stem cells (and/or progenitor cells) from various sources and seen that the impact in terms of the numbers of cells and the cellular functions are influenced by obesity as well as cell source. Additionally, we have seen that there are long-term consequences of obesity and there may be some irreversible damage caused by obesity. Some of these long-term consequences involve h

INTRODUCTION As we saw in Obesity and Stem Cells, Part I, the impact of obesity could be variable depending upon the source of the stem cells. In this particular blog, we will focus upon haematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs) in the bone marrow. For this, we are reviewing the paper by van den Berg, et al (2016). Despite the previous blog showing that marrow cells change differently than subcutaneous fat and infrapatellar fat pad cells, Wu et al (2013) only investiga

INTRODUCTION Obesity is never a fun topic to discuss. In fact, even the discussion of the topic can be associated with "fat shaming." However, ignoring the realities of the effects of obesity is more shameful. Moreover, obesity has a special, and difficult, meaning for me personally - I have been obese. I had been very athletic and then was injured. Athletes often struggle with weight gain once they stop competing. Naturally, obesity and its comorbidities have been of interes