Most of the regular fat in our bodies is somewhat white or yellowish in color and is generally recognized belonging to the bad-variety: one that does not burn a of of calories and adds to the overall weight of a person resulting in the onset of numerous ailments including diabetes and heart disease.
There is another form of fat, however, and studies reported in the New England of Medicine report that this so called “Brown Fat” is more common in adults than previously thought and has much better properties as well:
“Fifty grams of maximally activated brown fat accounts for 20 percent of your resting energy expenditure,” Dr. Aaron Cypress of the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, who led one of the studies, said in an interview. “If you add that up, that’s 400 or 500 calories per day.
“Practically speaking, we have a great potential to have a new treatment in our armamentarium against diabetes and obesity.” [Yahoo News]
The studies did find that obese people had less of this brown-fat than regular people which led some of the sicentists to speculate if “switching on” this fat in teh obese could spur them on to lose excess weight. Hoever, this theory is untested and the chances do exist that the overweight might simply compensate by eating more and negating the beneficial aspects of such intervention.
The things we know that do work? Diet and exercise. But they rarely gets featured in medical journals!
