Advice On Brown Fat & Weight Loss
posted on 10/21/2009
The human body has two types of adipose tissue (body fat). White fat and brown fat. Brown fat is found in animals that hibernate and in new born babies, Babies are born with it to help keep them warm. It was thought that as a person grows they lose their brown fat. Recently it was discovered that adults do have brown fat and that brown fat can be used to help rid the body of the unwanted white fat. White fat is the fat that all diets target and we try to rid ourselves of.
The New England Journal of Medicine revealed three studies showing that more than half of adult men and women still have brown fat. The brown fat must be stimulated but once it is it can aid in the efforts to get rid of the white fat in the body.
Brown fat in humans activates when we become cold. When a body is cold the brown fat becomes turned on and begins to give off heat and in return consumes lots of white fat. Over the course of a year an average person can expect to lose about 9 pounds. It seems that thin people have more brown fat than heavier people and research is being done to see exactly what can be done to help people with less brown fat and more white fat. Research is cautiously promising on how brown fat can be used to fight obesity. Research also showed that the people with the most active brown fat were cancer and thyroid patients. This might mean that artificially stimulating the brown fat might inadvertantly cause harm to another body function.
Further study is needed to determine how we can activate the stores of brown fat and lose weight without diets or exercise. Stay tuned. For more information on brown fat visit The New England Journal of Medicine online: http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/short/360/15/1509.
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