The MACA Root users

Women have more fat than men. A “fit” woman can safely go down to around eighteen per cent body fat, but no further, whereas a fit man can go almost as low as he’d like with no problems. Some male weight lifters manage to get down to around five percent. Additionally, women store fat in different places than men. When men gain weight, it is almost always concentrated around their abdomens. This is called visceral fat, and it is the fat most highly associated with diabetes and other diseases of civilization.

The other kind of fat is called subcutaneous fat, and it’s the fat that appears underneath the skin spread out around the body. A woman’s body prefers subcutaneous fat. This phenomenon explains why women typically have less muscle definition than men–a tiny layer of fat is usually smoothing over all little muscular ripples. It also explains why they have large hips instead of large abdomens. Women have more subcutaneous fat than men in general, and they also store it preferentially in tissue around the hips, thighs, and buttocks. As a side note, estrogen is also important, but not the only factor, for the development and size of breast tissue.

But women only have large hips versus abdomens so long as they have enough estrogen in their systems. As soon as estrogen drops off, specifically in menopause, women see their fat mass shift to their middles. This is a hazard to their health, as well as a bit of an affront to their identity as shapely, reproductive beings. There are ways to mitigate that, of course, primary of which is eating a natural, anti-inflammatory diet, secondary of which is staying active and fit.

Estrogen causes an increase in the receptor known as anti-lipolytic alpha 2A-adrenergic receptor. (Anti-lipolytic = anti-fat.) This is how subcutaneous cells maintain their fat mass while other cells do not. In activating this receptor, estrogen increases the number of anti-fat breakdown receptors in subcutaneous fat. Because of the increase in these receptors, cells break down fat less often.

This is not a bad thing! This is a glorious thing. While it may sound like estrogen is making you fat and keeping your biceps hidden, what it is really doing is keeping the fat storage that your body naturally wants to do away from your abdomen and more in your breasts, hips, and buttocks. Men are not so lucky. They pack on the disease-causing abdominal fat like it’s their jobs. Estrogen, on the other hand, protects a woman from that phenomenon. As well as making her body feminine. Which is hot. "