How Diets High in Fat and Sugar Harden Arteries: A New Insight

You know how eating too much fatty and sugary food can lead to health problems? One big issue is that it can make your arteries stiffer. Arteries are like highways in the body, carrying blood to your heart and other parts. When they get stiff, it's like narrowing those highways, making it tougher for blood to flow as it should. Scientists now think a specific process involving a protein called PPM1B plays a big role in this. PPM1B is like a little helper in the body, keeping things balanced. But when we eat a lot of fatty and sugary foods, this helper gets changed in a way that makes arteries stiffen. How? Another helper protein called BRISC is involved. It removes tiny tags (called ubiquitins) that tell PPM1B when to work. When BRISC takes these tags off, PPM1B can't do its job right, and that's where the trouble starts. This sets off a chain reaction, activating a pathway called TGF-beta. Think of it like a messenger system in the body. When TGF-beta is activated, it sends signals that make arteries stiffer. So, even thoughBRISC and PPM1B are small parts of the picture, they have a big impact on how our diet affects our arteries. Understanding this process can help scientists find better ways to prevent and treat heart problems linked to what we eat. It's like figuring out a puzzle. Once you know how the pieces fit, you can make changes to keep the puzzle (or your health) in good shape.