Why some people can't stop fat from leaking out
Adipose Tissue Resistance to the Antilipolytic Effect of Insulin and Niacin in Humans With Obesity.
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a healthcare professional. Terms
Even when the body tries to stop fat from leaving fat cells using two different signals (insulin and niacin), people with obesity or diabetes often can't stop it — and if one signal fails, the other usually fails too.
Surprising Findings
Niacin suppresses fat release even while reducing phosphorylation of Akt and perilipin 1—proteins essential for insulin’s fat-blocking effect.
Common belief: if you disrupt insulin signaling proteins, fat release should increase. Here, disrupting them actually coincides with fat release being suppressed—defying cause-effect logic.
Practical Takeaways
If you're struggling to lose weight despite insulin control, the issue may not be your diet or insulin levels—it could be a deeper fat-cell regulation problem that needs targeted therapies.
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a healthcare professional. Terms
Even when the body tries to stop fat from leaving fat cells using two different signals (insulin and niacin), people with obesity or diabetes often can't stop it — and if one signal fails, the other usually fails too.
Surprising Findings
Niacin suppresses fat release even while reducing phosphorylation of Akt and perilipin 1—proteins essential for insulin’s fat-blocking effect.
Common belief: if you disrupt insulin signaling proteins, fat release should increase. Here, disrupting them actually coincides with fat release being suppressed—defying cause-effect logic.
Practical Takeaways
If you're struggling to lose weight despite insulin control, the issue may not be your diet or insulin levels—it could be a deeper fat-cell regulation problem that needs targeted therapies.
Publication
Journal
Diabetes
Year
2026
Authors
Shuhao Lin, K. Lytle, Nicola Fink, Michael D. Jensen
Related Content
Claims (6)
If fat is released from fat stores but not burned for energy, the total amount of fat in the body does not decrease.
In people with obesity or type 2 diabetes, the less effectively insulin reduces fat release from fat cells, the less effectively niacin does too, suggesting both substances are affected by the same underlying problem in how fat breakdown is controlled.
In people with obesity or type 2 diabetes, the way their bodies respond to insulin and niacin in suppressing free fatty acids varies from person to person, but those who do not respond well to one of these agents typically also do not respond well to the other.
In people with obesity or type 2 diabetes, niacin still reduces fat breakdown in adipose tissue even when the usual insulin signaling pathways are less active, indicating it may use alternative biological mechanisms to achieve this effect.
In people with obesity or type 2 diabetes, injecting niacin decreases specific molecular signals in fat tissue that normally help prevent fat breakdown, even though niacin overall reduces fat breakdown.