While white fat stores calories, brown fat burns energy and could help us lose weight. Now, scientists have found a way of making the They have demonstrated that MKK6 controls the conversion of fat stores, known as white fat, into A new article describes how proteins called SUMO and ubiquitin and molecular machines called proteasomes play a crucial role in DNA recombination ScienceDaily shares links with sites in the TrendMD network and earns revenue from third-party advertisers, where indicated.
Print Email Share. Just a Game? Living Well. View all the latest top news in the environmental sciences, or browse the topics below:. Here are a few of the amazing things I learnt about sumo — I hope they will encourage you to go to go and see a tournament for yourself! Compared with most sports in the world today, sumo originated a heck of a long time ago. About 1, years, in fact. From the very beginning it was entwined with Shinto ritual, when it was performed at shrines to ensure a bountiful harvest and to honour the spirits — known as kami.
Each of the ring-entering ceremonies is a Shinto purification ritual, and every newly promoted yokozuna the highest rank in sumo performs his first ring-entering ceremony at the Meiji Shrine in Tokyo. The canopy that hangs over the ring is modelled after the roof of a Shinto shrine, indicating that the ring itself is a holy place.
This leads to quite a lot of faffing about while each wrestler tries to psyche the other out, pretending to put his hand down and then getting back up again. Once they finally do begin, it is very rare for sumo bouts to last longer than a few seconds — although occasionally they can last up to four minutes. This means that the action is very fast-paced and exciting. A match ends when one of the wrestlers is either thrown out of the ring, or if any part of his body apart from the soles of his feet touches the ground.
The following video of a sumo match plus superb commentary, it has to be said is a great example of just how long it takes for a bout to begin:. Interestingly, the match can also end if one of the wrestlers loses his mawashi , or loincloth — in which case the de-loinclothed wrestler is disqualified. More interestingly still, this rule was only adopted after Japan began to take on European read: prudish attitudes toward nudity.
This outcome is very rare in sumo, but a wardrobe malfunction did occur during a match in May , when the unfortunate wrestler Asanokiri exposed himself and was disqualified immediately. I once met a retired sumo wrestler who ran a chanko nabe restaurant in Hakuba.
Now I understand why. It would be easy to assume from their famously substantial girth that wrestlers live a life of excess outside their training schedule.
An average stable will contain around 15 wrestlers, and is arranged according to a strict hierarchy. Life is hardest for the lower ranked wrestlers, who are expected to get up earliest and to cook, clean, serve food, and generally wait on the higher ranked wrestlers.
They even have to bathe last after training, and get last pick at dinner time — after their more senior peers have gobbled all the choice morsels!
If this sounds hard, it gets even harder. Of course, excess weight can be linked to all of those things, but what really matters is the type of weight we carry and where we carry it. It's no secret that our weight number shows more than just body fat, although when we step on a scale we can easily lose sight of that. Muscle, water, and bone all weigh something too, and our weight number doesn't show us those differences.
Body composition, which can be tricky to measure, can give us a better idea of whether our weight - or more specifically body fat - may pose health risks. But even a body composition measurement can be misleading. For example, Japanese sumo wrestlers weigh between pounds with a high proportion of body fat and carry much of that weight in their midsections, the part of the body that typically lends itself to greater health risks. Yet active sumo wrestlers consistently display normal blood pressure, glucose, and cholesterol.
How can this be? To survive the voyages across the open ocean, and to endure and thrive when they arrived on the islands, the people needed to be thrifty and to conserve energy wherever possible. Any gene that aids this goal will be selected. The problem now, of course, is that the environment and their way of life has changed radically. Levels of physical exertion are lower than they were even a few decades ago.
Fast food is easily available, and, by some measures, 40 percent of children are overweight — even by the time they are 15 months old. In this new environment, you can see how a gene that is intent on hoarding as much fat as possible can contribute to obesity. I read a piece in the Asia Pacific Journal of Sport and Social Science arguing that obesity is a professional requirement for sumo wrestlers.
Surprisingly, sumo wrestlers have the largest fat-free mass of all professional athletes. This means that ignoring the fat, they have large body masses.
The fat they put on is different to how the rest of us get fat. The rest of us tend to put on visceral fat in the abdomen, around the organs, and this is much less healthy. Sumo wrestlers also eat differently from the rest of us. They consume large amounts of food in two sittings per day, unlike the rest of us who typically have three meals a day.
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