Is There A Way To Prevent Cellulite? Maybe

Posted 05/14/2009

A person might win a Nobel Prize, at least in women’s minds, if they could just cure cellulite. Forget about curing diseases for the moment, can you just dissolve cellulite, that is all that women want to know. Can you blame them?

Called the “greatest skin problem among healthy people,” cellulite is that dimpled skin on the thighs and buttocks that plagues 85-98% of American women. There are no truly effective treatments for cellulite. Topical and laser treatments abound, but provide only marginal improvement.

Cellulite is an unwelcome combination of fat, waste and water that forms bumpy skin. Once trapped in the skin, it’s difficult to get rid of. The reason why cellulite primarily occurs among women is because they have abundant levels of estrogen that encourage the storage of fat, called lipogenesis. Women store fat to ensure they have enough of it for pregnancy and lactation. Topical therapies, even if effective, would be continually required to fix this problem.

But cellulite is not a plague in Japan, where weak estrogen-like molecules from green tea and soy appear to calm the effects of natural estrogen in the body. When was the last time you saw a Japanese woman with cellulite?

Cellulite is believed to originate from the over-stimulation of an enzyme, fatty acid synthase, which hastens lipogenesis (fat deposition). Natural molecules called flavonoids, found in wine, green tea, onions, and fermented sources of soy (tempeh and miso), block fatty acid synthase, making these molecules potential weight control agents. [Molecular Nutrition Food Research 50: 211-17, 2006] Add cellulite inhibition to the list of potential benefits provided in concentrated sources of molecules, such as quercetin (onions, wine), resveratrol (wine) and epigallocatechin (green tea). [Current Pharmaceutical Biotechnology 7: 483-93, 2006] Resveratrol appears to inhibit lipogenesis even at very low doses. [Experimental Clinical Endocrinology Diabetes 115: 2007 online] Another natural molecule found in bran and soy (IP6) also inhibits lipogenesis. [Anticancer Research 19: 3695-98, 1999]

There remains an intriguing possibility that these molecules could prevent the dreaded formation of cellulite. And that, my friend, might drive females into a frenzy for red wine pills, green tea drinks and to eating out at Japanese restaurants to obtain miso soup.

Copyright 2009 Bill Sardi