Expanding body fat releases blood supply-generating factors that may end up hooking up tumors, too.
Targeting Angiogenesis to Lose Weight
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Below is an approximation of this video’s audio content. To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring, watch the above video.
Angiogenesis is the creation of blood new vessels. Tumors use it to keep growing. Well, our fatty tissue also needs a blood supply to expand. So, might an anti-angiogenic approach work for weight loss, too? I’ll explore that in this video and the next.
Many of our modern front-line therapies against cancer incorporate “anti-angiogenesis” strategies, from the Greek words angio-, meaning vessel, and genesis, meaning creation. So, anti-angiogenesis is opposing the creation of blood vessels. In other words, fighting cancer by cutting off tumor supply lines.
Some cancers are only able to grow to about the size of the tip of a ballpoint pen without a blood supply. Tumor growth then stalls. Autopsy studies show that virtually everyone has these tiny tumors in them by age 70. Cancer-without-disease can, therefore, be considered the normal state during aging.
To commandeer a blood supply, tumors diabolically release angiogenic factors, chemicals that cause new blood vessels to sprout toward the cancer. Once a blood vessel reaches the tumor and attaches, it’s off to the races—the tumor can then take off exponentially. By starving cancer of its blood supply, chemotherapy that blocks this process can sometimes cause tumors to shrink. But ideally, we wouldn’t have to wait until such a late stage to nip them in the bud. That’s where our diet can come in. Many of the phytonutrients we know and love in tea, spices, berries, broccoli, and beans have anti-angiogenic properties. Given the power of plants, the foundation of an anti-angiogenic approach to cancer has been considered a whole food plant-based diet.
But the title of this video is, “Targeting angiogenesis to lose weight.” What does this have to do with obesity? Well, think about it. Tumors aren’t the only tissue in the body with expanding volume. The average tumor picked up by mammograms is only about the size of a marble, and it can take breast cancer decades to grow. Whereas, overfeed people, and you can easily add an entire pound of fatty tissue in a matter of days. And, body fat is highly vascularized. Each fat cell in our body is essentially surrounded by tiny blood vessels. In large liposuction operations, a third of what’s vacuumed out is straight blood.
Throughout adulthood, our fatty tissue is constantly remodeling, expanding, and shrinking based on our day-to-day energy demands. This requires the development and retreat of extensive networks of new blood vessels. The human body already contains 60,000 miles of blood vessels. Imagine how many more miles have to be constructed when we gain weight. Without angiogenesis, without the sprouting of all these new blood vessels, we wouldn’t be able to add all that fat. Now, do you see where this is all going?
To expand, fat cells release the same kind of chemicals that tumors do to swell its blood supply. Fatty tissue is so angiogenic, open-heart surgeons have even tried grafting fatty tissue directly onto the heart after a heart attack, in hopes it would foster the growth of arteries to bypass the blockages. You can take fat samples from obese individuals during bariatric surgery, place them on living membranes of a fertile chicken egg, and within a week, the fat is literally engulfed in blood vessels. That may even help explain why excess body fat can accelerate cancer growth.
Obesity increases the risk of more than a dozen different cancers, increasing the overall risk of getting and then dying from cancer by about 20 percent. All those angiogenic factors released from our increasing body fat may spill out into our bloodstream, resulting in higher blood levels among overweight individuals, which can then drop back down when we lose weight. So, maybe we could get the best of both worlds if we treated obesity like a tumor, using anti-angiogenic strategies to prevent the expansion of our fat mass in the first place. There are anti-angiogenic drugs, as well as anti-angiogenic foods. We’ll explore both, next.
Please consider volunteering to help out on the site.
- Cao Y. Angiogenesis as a therapeutic target for obesity and metabolic diseases. Chem Immunol Allergy. 2014;99:170-179.
- Cao Y, Cao R, Bråkenhielm E. Antiangiogenic mechanisms of diet-derived polyphenols. J Nutr Biochem. 2002;13(7):380-390.
- Li WW, Li VW, Hutnik M, Chiou AS. Tumor angiogenesis as a target for dietary cancer prevention. J Oncol. 2012;2012:879623.
- Albini A, Tosetti F, Li VW, Noonan DM, Li WW. Cancer prevention by targeting angiogenesis. Nat Rev Clin Oncol. 2012;9(9):498-509.
- Tarver T. The Chronic Disease Food Remedy. Food Technol. 2012;66(10):23-31.
- McCarty MF. A wholly nutritional “multifocal angiostatic therapy” for control of disseminated cancer. Med Hypotheses. 2003;61(1):1-15.
- Black WC, Welch HG. Advances in diagnostic imaging and overestimations of disease prevalence and the benefits of therapy. N Engl J Med. 1993;328(17):1237-1243.
- Sanders ME, Schuyler PA, Dupont WD, Page DL. The natural history of low-grade ductal carcinoma in situ of the breast in women treated by biopsy only revealed over 30 years of long-term follow-up. Cancer. 2005;103(12):2481-2484.
- Norgan NG, Durnin JV. The effect of 6 weeks of overfeeding on the body weight, body composition, and energy metabolism of young men. Am J Clin Nutr. 1980;33(5):978-988.
- Bruemmer D. Targeting angiogenesis as treatment for obesity. Arterioscler Thromb Vasc Biol. 2012;32(2):161-162.
- Courtiss EH, Choucair RJ, Donelan MB. Large-volume suction lipectomy: an analysis of 108 patients. Plast Reconstr Surg. 1992;89(6):1068-1079; discussion 1080-1082.
- Lemoine AY, Ledoux S, Larger E. Adipose tissue angiogenesis in obesity. Thromb Haemost. 2013;110(4):661-668.
- Cao Y. Adipose tissue angiogenesis as a therapeutic target for obesity and metabolic diseases. Nat Rev Drug Discov. 2010;9(2):107-115.
- Liu L, Meydani M. Angiogenesis inhibitors may regulate adiposity. Nutr Rev. 2003;61(11):384-387.
- Vineberg AM, Baichwal KS, Myers J. Treatment of acute myocardial infarction by epicardiectomy and free omental graft. Surgery. 1965;57:836-838.
- Ledoux S, Queguiner I, Msika S, et al. Angiogenesis associated with visceral and subcutaneous adipose tissue in severe human obesity. Diabetes. 2008;57(12):3247-3257.
- Smith LA, O’Flanagan CH, Bowers LW, Allott EH, Hursting SD. Translating mechanism-based strategies to break the obesity-cancer link: a narrative review. J Acad Nutr Diet. 2018;118(4):652-667.
- Silha JV, Krsek M, Sucharda P, Murphy LJ. Angiogenic factors are elevated in overweight and obese individuals. Int J Obes (Lond). 2005;29(11):1308-1314.
- Duggan C, Tapsoba J de D, Wang CY, McTiernan A. Dietary weight loss and exercise effects on serum biomarkers of angiogenesis in overweight postmenopausal women: a randomized controlled trial. Cancer Res. 2016;76(14):4226-4235.
- Seeley RJ. Treating obesity like a tumor. Cell Metab. 2012;15(1):1-2.
Motion graphics by Avo Media
Below is an approximation of this video’s audio content. To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring, watch the above video.
Angiogenesis is the creation of blood new vessels. Tumors use it to keep growing. Well, our fatty tissue also needs a blood supply to expand. So, might an anti-angiogenic approach work for weight loss, too? I’ll explore that in this video and the next.
Many of our modern front-line therapies against cancer incorporate “anti-angiogenesis” strategies, from the Greek words angio-, meaning vessel, and genesis, meaning creation. So, anti-angiogenesis is opposing the creation of blood vessels. In other words, fighting cancer by cutting off tumor supply lines.
Some cancers are only able to grow to about the size of the tip of a ballpoint pen without a blood supply. Tumor growth then stalls. Autopsy studies show that virtually everyone has these tiny tumors in them by age 70. Cancer-without-disease can, therefore, be considered the normal state during aging.
To commandeer a blood supply, tumors diabolically release angiogenic factors, chemicals that cause new blood vessels to sprout toward the cancer. Once a blood vessel reaches the tumor and attaches, it’s off to the races—the tumor can then take off exponentially. By starving cancer of its blood supply, chemotherapy that blocks this process can sometimes cause tumors to shrink. But ideally, we wouldn’t have to wait until such a late stage to nip them in the bud. That’s where our diet can come in. Many of the phytonutrients we know and love in tea, spices, berries, broccoli, and beans have anti-angiogenic properties. Given the power of plants, the foundation of an anti-angiogenic approach to cancer has been considered a whole food plant-based diet.
But the title of this video is, “Targeting angiogenesis to lose weight.” What does this have to do with obesity? Well, think about it. Tumors aren’t the only tissue in the body with expanding volume. The average tumor picked up by mammograms is only about the size of a marble, and it can take breast cancer decades to grow. Whereas, overfeed people, and you can easily add an entire pound of fatty tissue in a matter of days. And, body fat is highly vascularized. Each fat cell in our body is essentially surrounded by tiny blood vessels. In large liposuction operations, a third of what’s vacuumed out is straight blood.
Throughout adulthood, our fatty tissue is constantly remodeling, expanding, and shrinking based on our day-to-day energy demands. This requires the development and retreat of extensive networks of new blood vessels. The human body already contains 60,000 miles of blood vessels. Imagine how many more miles have to be constructed when we gain weight. Without angiogenesis, without the sprouting of all these new blood vessels, we wouldn’t be able to add all that fat. Now, do you see where this is all going?
To expand, fat cells release the same kind of chemicals that tumors do to swell its blood supply. Fatty tissue is so angiogenic, open-heart surgeons have even tried grafting fatty tissue directly onto the heart after a heart attack, in hopes it would foster the growth of arteries to bypass the blockages. You can take fat samples from obese individuals during bariatric surgery, place them on living membranes of a fertile chicken egg, and within a week, the fat is literally engulfed in blood vessels. That may even help explain why excess body fat can accelerate cancer growth.
Obesity increases the risk of more than a dozen different cancers, increasing the overall risk of getting and then dying from cancer by about 20 percent. All those angiogenic factors released from our increasing body fat may spill out into our bloodstream, resulting in higher blood levels among overweight individuals, which can then drop back down when we lose weight. So, maybe we could get the best of both worlds if we treated obesity like a tumor, using anti-angiogenic strategies to prevent the expansion of our fat mass in the first place. There are anti-angiogenic drugs, as well as anti-angiogenic foods. We’ll explore both, next.
Please consider volunteering to help out on the site.
- Cao Y. Angiogenesis as a therapeutic target for obesity and metabolic diseases. Chem Immunol Allergy. 2014;99:170-179.
- Cao Y, Cao R, Bråkenhielm E. Antiangiogenic mechanisms of diet-derived polyphenols. J Nutr Biochem. 2002;13(7):380-390.
- Li WW, Li VW, Hutnik M, Chiou AS. Tumor angiogenesis as a target for dietary cancer prevention. J Oncol. 2012;2012:879623.
- Albini A, Tosetti F, Li VW, Noonan DM, Li WW. Cancer prevention by targeting angiogenesis. Nat Rev Clin Oncol. 2012;9(9):498-509.
- Tarver T. The Chronic Disease Food Remedy. Food Technol. 2012;66(10):23-31.
- McCarty MF. A wholly nutritional “multifocal angiostatic therapy” for control of disseminated cancer. Med Hypotheses. 2003;61(1):1-15.
- Black WC, Welch HG. Advances in diagnostic imaging and overestimations of disease prevalence and the benefits of therapy. N Engl J Med. 1993;328(17):1237-1243.
- Sanders ME, Schuyler PA, Dupont WD, Page DL. The natural history of low-grade ductal carcinoma in situ of the breast in women treated by biopsy only revealed over 30 years of long-term follow-up. Cancer. 2005;103(12):2481-2484.
- Norgan NG, Durnin JV. The effect of 6 weeks of overfeeding on the body weight, body composition, and energy metabolism of young men. Am J Clin Nutr. 1980;33(5):978-988.
- Bruemmer D. Targeting angiogenesis as treatment for obesity. Arterioscler Thromb Vasc Biol. 2012;32(2):161-162.
- Courtiss EH, Choucair RJ, Donelan MB. Large-volume suction lipectomy: an analysis of 108 patients. Plast Reconstr Surg. 1992;89(6):1068-1079; discussion 1080-1082.
- Lemoine AY, Ledoux S, Larger E. Adipose tissue angiogenesis in obesity. Thromb Haemost. 2013;110(4):661-668.
- Cao Y. Adipose tissue angiogenesis as a therapeutic target for obesity and metabolic diseases. Nat Rev Drug Discov. 2010;9(2):107-115.
- Liu L, Meydani M. Angiogenesis inhibitors may regulate adiposity. Nutr Rev. 2003;61(11):384-387.
- Vineberg AM, Baichwal KS, Myers J. Treatment of acute myocardial infarction by epicardiectomy and free omental graft. Surgery. 1965;57:836-838.
- Ledoux S, Queguiner I, Msika S, et al. Angiogenesis associated with visceral and subcutaneous adipose tissue in severe human obesity. Diabetes. 2008;57(12):3247-3257.
- Smith LA, O’Flanagan CH, Bowers LW, Allott EH, Hursting SD. Translating mechanism-based strategies to break the obesity-cancer link: a narrative review. J Acad Nutr Diet. 2018;118(4):652-667.
- Silha JV, Krsek M, Sucharda P, Murphy LJ. Angiogenic factors are elevated in overweight and obese individuals. Int J Obes (Lond). 2005;29(11):1308-1314.
- Duggan C, Tapsoba J de D, Wang CY, McTiernan A. Dietary weight loss and exercise effects on serum biomarkers of angiogenesis in overweight postmenopausal women: a randomized controlled trial. Cancer Res. 2016;76(14):4226-4235.
- Seeley RJ. Treating obesity like a tumor. Cell Metab. 2012;15(1):1-2.
Motion graphics by Avo Media
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Title
Targeting Angiogenesis to Lose Weight
LicenseCreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)
Content URLDoctor's Note
So, Which Foods Are the Most Anti-Angiogenic? Watch the next video to find out.
This video was based on research I did for How Not to Diet that unfortunately had to be cut due to space constraints. So glad to finally see it come to life! For those who missed the book, check out Trailer for How Not to Diet: Dr. Greger’s Guide to Weight Loss.
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