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How Is Brown Fat Linked To Obesity Epidemic? Besides white or yellow fat that is more commonly known, brown fat (brown adipose tissue, BAT) can also be found in human bodies. White fat builds around waist and thigh while brown fat is mainly found around the neck areas (front and back). When people consume excessive calories, their bodies convert these calories into a contingency energy reserve in the form of white fat. Brown fat, on the other hand, generates heat by burning calories. It is known that a human newborn or infant has about 5 percent of body weight made up of brown fat. But this would gradually decline with age. A fat person would have less brown fat than a thin person. Main function of brown fat is to generate body heat, but scientists stress that it might have many other things that yet to be known. It is also believed that brown fat would probably play an important role in keeping people lean. If scientists could find ways to raise a person’s brown fat level, that person should become slimmer. Nevertheless, it has never been shown that brown fat in adult humans can actually burn energy.
A group of Canadian researchers from Universite de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Quebec and Universite Laval, Quebec City, Quebec intended to determine how humans could switch on the brown fat in order to use up fat, and they finally discovered that exposure to cold environments would be the best trigger. The brown fat turned on even if people were exposed to slightly cold environments. The evidence they provided showed that healthy adults with higher levels of brown fat were better able to stay warm when it is cold. In a paper published in the ‘Journal of Clinical Investigation’ on January 24, 2012, the researchers also reported that when brown fat cells were active, the participants burned an extra 250 calories, that is equivalent to a 1.8 times increase in calorie burning rate. The study involved 6 healthy young men aged from 23 to 42 years, with a BMI (body mass index) ranged from 23.7 to 31.0 kg/m2, and taking no medication. All the participants had their brown fat levels measured when the experiment began. They were then asked to stay in cooling suites that lowered their skin temperature by 3.8 Celsius, but their core body temperatures remained about the same. Once in the cooling suites, the participants were slightly shivering. A link between levels of brown fat and when people started to shiver from cold was found: the more brown fat a person had, the longer it would take for this person to start shivering. Once the person felt cold, the brown fat became active and started burning calories. During a 3-hour period, it was found that 250 extra calories were burned in the presence of active brown fat cells, compared to those who rested in normal temperatures. It is also equivalent to a walking rate of burning calories. While this was a very small study, the researchers argued that their findings were consistent between participants. They were, therefore, confident that what they found should be able to apply to other populations. Though it is still too early to relate their findings to weight loss, the researchers believed that these findings could eventually be used to find ways to fight obesity epidemic if future larger studies can confirm the therapeutic benefits of activating brown fat. Obesity has always been a concern for many countries as people who are obese are very likely to develop heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke, Type-2 diabetes and even certain types of cancer. This would result in tremendously health care cost. Other health experts not involved in the study admitted that they do not yet know how people could raise their brown fat content, or if this is recommendable or desirable. But they believe the study did indicate finding means to increase a person’s amount of brown fat is highly unlikely to help that person lose weight. Instead, developing ways to ensure brown fat is active and burns calories will be desired.
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