In a bid to tackle the growing crisis of weight gain and fight obesity, scientists have been conducting various studies and making headway with new information and approaches.
One such approach to weight loss focuses on brown fat, which is the energy-burning tissue found deep within your body.
Brown fat is what keeps you warm when temperatures drop.
Babies have a huge reserve of brown fat which helps keep them warm. But as we get older brown fat reduces.
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Yet adults, especially those that are lean, still have substantial amounts of brown fat in their body – mainly in the neck and upper back.
Most of the fat in your body is white fat which lies under the skin and around organs. Fat deposits increase when you consume more calories than you burn.
While white fat is important for survival, it is this excess fat which is associated with health issues and the risk of obesity.
That is why researchers have been looking at harnessing the calorie-burning power of brown fat to stop weight gain.
But, how brown fat functions to achieve this is unknown.
So far scientists have mainly relied on a technique called PET/CT to examine how brown fat functions deep inside the body. But this technique cannot measure the chemical factors in the brown fat.
Recently scientists from the University of Edinburgh developed a technique called microdialysis to measure how brown fat generates heat in people.
This method involves inserting a small tube into an area of brown fat in the body and flushing it with fluid to collect a sample of the tissues’ chemical composition.
The researchers used this technique on six healthy participants and used the PET/CT to guide the tube into the right location.
They found that in cold conditions brown fat uses its own energy reserves and other substances to generate heat.
However, the researchers also found that brown fat is active even in warm conditions, when it does not need to generate heat. This outcome has not been seen before.
Researchers hope that this technique helps them understand how brown fat works and further help them analyse the specific chemicals that are involved in the process.
It will also be able to point at therapies that activate the energy-burning power of brown fat which could help with weight loss in the future.
Although, at the moment you can try various other approaches to weight loss in an attempt to fight obesity like mindfulness meditation, exercise and consuming a healthy diet.
Source: Cell Metabolism
