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Omental Fat & Diabetes

May 17, 2011 | By Angela Ogunjimi
Omental Fat & Diabetes
Photo Credit need to diet image by Kimberly Reinick from Fotolia.com

Omental fat was probably not mentioned in your high school biology textbook, but chances are you've been hearing more about it in recent years. It's a layer of fat tissue within your abdominal cavity, and it's linked to all sorts of health issues. Recent research has speculated whether removing omental fat surgically could help as a diabetes treatment. The results haven't been very favorable, however. If you have diabetes and are overweight, talk with your doctor about your options for weight control.

Omental Fat

In the book "YOU: On a Diet," Drs. Michael Roizen and Mehmet Oz describe omentum as a pouch-like organ that is essentially a layer of fat that hangs underneath the muscles of your stomach. Its primary purpose is to store fat, especially from the excess calories in the foods you eat. They liken it to a fat "parking lot," but the fat there is far from benign. That fat -- the omentum -- is in proximity to other organs, and they can use that fat as an energy source. Omental fat can be quickly accessed by your liver, for example, and cause a rise in your cholesterol and triglyceride levels. It also squeezes on your kidneys and is associated with increases in blood pressure.

Omental Fat and General Health

Omental fat is also a good indicator of your stress level, and bigger bellies -- due to enlargement of omental fat -- are often the result of inadequately managed stress, which sparks inflammation. The good news is that omental fat responds well to diet and exercise. Perhaps more important, getting healthy stops the omentum from feeding fat to other organs, thereby improving your blood lipids, arterial health and immune system function.

Diabetes

Diabetes is a group of metabolic disorders affecting close to 26 million Americans of all walks of life. The disease involves a problem with producing or sensing the hormone insulin. Insulin's job is to help chauffeur blood sugar into your body's cells to fuel their many processes. Diabetes, however, interrupts this process and leads to a buildup of blood sugar in the bloodstream. This buildup can severely damage organs, leading to common complications such as heart disease, kidney disease, systemic nerve damage, blindness and amputations.

Type 2 Diabetes and Weight

Type 2 diabetes is a growing epidemic and tends to grab the lion's share of attention of all the types of diabetes. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that at current trends, one in three Americans could experience Type 2 diabetes in their lifetime by 2050. Each year, 90 to 95 percent of all new diabetes diagnoses are for Type 2 diabetes, adds CDC. It is a corollary of the twin epidemic of growing obesity rates. The National Diabetes Information Clearinghouse states that 80 percent of Type 2 diabetics are overweight, although other sources put the figure closer to 90 percent.

Omentectomy: A Novel Diabetes Treatment?

Because of the metabolic consequences of both omental fat and diabetes, scientists have long wondered whether removing the omentum would help treat diabetes. Obesity researchers have known for some time that gastric bypass surgeries remarkably improve and, in some cases, resolve diabetes. The primary variable has been waist circumference; it is a powerful predictor of being diagnosed with diabetes and may have an effect on insulin sensitivity. So that led to the hypothesis that an omentectomy alone, or in conjunction with bariatric surgery, would help with diabetes. So far, results from studies have been mixed.

A 2002 study conducted by Swedish researchers found that the procedure with adjustable gastric banding improved glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity when compared with participants who only underwent gastric banding. A 2010 study by Washington University medical researchers compared obese people who had an omentectomy some time after having Roux-en-Y gastric bypass and diabetics who only underwent an omentectomy. With the weight-loss surgery, patients experienced improvements in their insulin sensitivity, which continued after removing the omentum, but the omentectomy by itself produced no effects on the insulin sensitivity of the diabetic sample. The authors concluded that with or without surgery, removing the omentum did little to improve insulin sensitivity.

Omentectomy Is Not Ready for Prime Time

Although research is ongoing to provide a final answer to this research question, another 2010 study by Mexican researchers in "Diabetes Care" states that this procedure is still experimental and the long-term complications remain unknown. They suggested that it may cause an inflammatory reaction, and besides that, other forms of visceral fat that are metabolically active are left in the abdominal cavity untouched by an omentectomy. As in others, this study found no benefits from the procedure, and the researchers concluded that an omentectomy is an unjustified addition to weight-loss surgery.

References

Article reviewed by Christine Brncik Last updated on: May 17, 2011

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