Brown Fat For Burning Calories

I have a friend that lives just outside of Minneapolis, Minnesota.  For those of you that don’t know, Minneapolis is located just above the 45th parallel, putting it just slightly further south than Ottawa, Canada.  So, needless to say, they have long winters that are far, far colder than we experience here in Kentucky.  It’s become a running joke during winter for me to send him copies of our weather forecast, particularly on days they’re expecting high temperatures of –20 degrees F.

This would be a horrible environment for me to attempt to exercise.  I consider myself an outdoorsman.  Maybe by some standards, I’m not, but I enjoy running, hiking, hunting, and fishing.  All outdoors.  For what I understand, when it’s warm, the opportunities for outdoor activities are very good, but its so cold for so long that I wouldn’t be surprised to learn people stayed indoors the majority of the year.  A bad combination for me.  I’ve got to figure that, as a group, they search pretty hard for alternative ways for burning calories.  That’s why it seems fitting that there was an article published today in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, detailing the calorie busting benefits of brown fat.  No.  I’m not kidding.

Fat For Burning Calories

When I’ve gone to health fairs, there is usually a booth that has ten pounds of preserved fat sitting up for display.  Have you ever seen this stuff?  It’s usually a roughly oblong shaped blob of white fat that was supposedly taken from a human cadaver.  It’s generally encased in some sort of plastic and preserved.  Whatever the appearance, its always white or yellow in color.  Turns out there is yet another type of fat cell that is brown.  And this brown fat is a calorie burning machine.

The obvious question is “what the heck is brown fat?”  I had never heard of it, but its existence has been known for quite some time.  Some warm-blooded animals that do not have the ability to shiver, have large numbers of brown fat cells.  Animals such as rodents and hibernating mammals.  This “brown adipose Ttssue” apparently consumes large numbers of calories for the sole purpose of generating heat.  I guess it makes sense that there must be another mechanism for maintaining body heat in hibernating mammals, but honestly I had never thought about the subject.  Babies also possess brown fat cells, which serve the same purpose, as they also can not shiver to stay warm.

Scientists had always believed that people lose their brown fat cells when they gain the ability to shiver for warmth.  Turns out there are some few brown fat cells left, located along the upper chest and neck.  Naturally, they’re looking for ways to nurture these cells, and increase their numbers in the body.  Perhaps not surprisingly, brown fat cells are more numerous in people that tend to be thinner, such that skinny people have more than heavy people.  Younger have more than older.  And so on.

This all leads me to wonder about whether brown is the new white?  Scientists have proven they can increase the number of brown fat cells in mice, so people are going to start lining up for trials.  Is this really a good idea?  For instance, they’ve shown that people taking beta-blockers have lower numbers of brown fat tissue.  Could we envision someone not taking their medication for fear they would have a drop in brown fat cells?  There’s another kicker, too.  Brown fat doesn’t generally become active until its cold.  This is why its taken so long to be detected.

All this research on fat and the possible use of fat for burning calories is vaguely interesting.  But I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for the brown wave to strike.  I expect before too long we’ll start hearing commercials claiming a new supplement that will allow us to go for a nightly ten minute walk and our newly cultured brown fat will burn 3000 calories.  I can hear it now, “Eat All You Want, Fat Created By Our *insert stuff here* Burns Calories.”

In 20 years, we’ll still be talking about how the number of calories you consume equates to weight loss.  There is no brown magic bullet.

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