Brown Fat Burns Calories Instead of Storing Them
New research has discovered that there may be a special kind of fat in your body that burns calories instead of storing them .According to three preliminary studies recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine you may have this fat and it could be activated simply by spending time in the cold!
Brown adipose tissue (called brown fat) helps babies, young children, and other small mammals stay warm by burning calories when activated by low temperatures. New research shows that many of us retain some of this Brown Fat even as adults.
"People who had brown fat were, in fact, different from the people who didn't," explained Dr. Aaron Cypess of the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, Massachusetts, the lead author of one of the new studies. "They were younger and leaner. People who were older, those who were obese, and those using heart drugs called beta blockers were less likely to have brown fat".
Researchers observed that some people had deposits of tissue that looked like fat but didn't act like it; this fat-like tissue was located above the collarbones and in the upper chest and consumed lots of energy. Conversely, white adipose tissue -- the regular fat that stores extra calories and makes us gain weight- shows very little metabolic activity.
