Burns Calories Faster With The Help of Brown Adipose Fat
Fat comes in two distinct colors - white which offers insulation and stores energy, and brown adipose fat which burns energy to produce heat?
Brown fat helps keep new-borns warm, but no one knew how much of this fat adults retain, or how active it might be.
Some thought adults had limited amounts or non of this “good fat; others were certain that it had no link to extra weight or obesity. The latest research in this area helps clarify the situation for all.
Research has been progressing for decades looking at brown fat (known to science as brown adipose tissue) in the hope of discovering methods to unlock its secrets.
Three new pieces of research in the April 9, 2009 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) confirm that brown fat is indeed present in adults, and it can be detected when exposing subjects to cold temperatures.
Most of us have quite small amounts of this fat around our collarbones and in the neck area, with women having two times as much on average, then men.
In some cases, those who had more active areas of brown fat were not as heavy leaving experts to wonder at the working of this type of fat.
“Fifty grams of maximally activated brown fat accounts for 20 percent of your resting energy expenditure”, explains Dr. Aaron Cypress of the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, who led one of the studies. “If you add that up, that’s 400 or 500 calories per day. So maybe a little of this good fat could go a long way.”
Also, in another study Finnish researcher Dr. Kirsi Virtanen of the University of Turku and colleagues used a technique called positron emission tomography (PET) scans to locate active brown fat in healthy volunteers.
The brown tissue became more active when the subjects were put in a chilly room for several hours. Experts discovered that this fat, burns calories faster in colder temperatures.
In this study, the metabolism was on average 15 times faster than in the areas of white fat cells.
So, could this brown fat play a role in metabolism also?
A third work, also appearing in the NEJM, conducted by a team at Maastricht University Medical Center discovered that obese men had less brown fat than subjects who were less overweight.
They also discovered that as people age they have less brown, and spending even a small amount of time in a chilly place can activate it.
These three studies indicate that adults do have functional brown fat. Though no one knows what role brown fat might play in weight loss in the future, researchers are hoping for big things.
Maybe further research will uncover a way to help the body produce more brown fat; or just activate the potentially good fat cells we have now. Possibly a drug could target some parts of brown fats metabolic mechanisms, maybe a procedure could remove the brown fat, amplify it somehow and return it to the body.
Cypress sees activation as key, though whether this would make people lose weight has yet to be tested.
Who knows if turning on this type of fat might just not make the body want to eat more?
If you’d like to try and activate your brown adipose tissue, turn down the thermostat, or spend more time outdoors in a cooler climate.
Temperatures of 61 degrees were used on the research subjects, and might be enough to have your own heat generating, fat burning engine humming along in no time.
Next - just head on over to the Daily Health Bulletin for more information on how brown adipose tissue burns calories, plus for a limited time get 5 free fantastic health reports. Click here for more details on these studies on brown adipose tissue.