Anyone who has spent time on the internet has seen clickbait ads like "Secrets your doctor doesn't want you to know about weight loss" or "How to lower your metabolism in 24 hours." In these articles, lists of fatty foods are usually identified as the primary culprits behind America's susceptibility to diabetes, obesity, and heart disease. While a poor diet is certainly still a key factor in metabolic diseases, a new BYU study reveals the impact of a lesser-known contributor: diesel exhaust .
The findings are published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences . The study, co-authored by eight BYU students, finds that exposure to the exhaust gas produced by diesel engines is tied to increased fat mass , enlarged fat cells , insulin resistance and inflammation. These changes can cause metabolic conditions such as obesity, diabetes, and heart disease .
"Two items have become increasingly clear to us: There are non-caloric influences on body fat , and inhaled pollution is one of them," said study senior author Benjamin Bikman, a professor of cell biology at BYU. "But what are the casual variables to this link? We wanted to know what was happening to the body at the level of the fat cell." Bikman and his colleagues study the causes and contributing factors of metabolic disorders.
He and other researchers have observed a correlation between the global increase in obesity and air pollutant exposure in recent years. Alongside fellow BYU professors Juan Arroyo and Paul Reyno.
