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In icy cold
Fat cells have a bad name because they make us fat. But that does not apply to all fat cells. In fact, there are those that actually make you slim!
The human body contains not one but two types of adipose tissue: white and brown. The white is the tissue that makes us fat. But the brown adipose tissue actually helps to prevent obesity. The more brown adipose tissue you have, the less chance of excess pounds.
Difference
White fat cells absorb fat from the diet as extra energy supply. Once full, they divide to create new fat stores. If you take in more calories than you expend, the white adipose tissue continuously expands. Brown fat cells generate heat from the fat reserves as soon as the body temperature drops. People who still have a relatively large amount of brown adipose tissue use more energy in a cold environment to keep warm than people who have little of it.
stoves
Hibernators such as hedgehogs and voles have a lot of brown fat. In their long hibernation, their body temperature drops to about zero degrees Celsius. When they wake up from that, they have to warm up quite a bit to be able to get moving again. The brown fat cells then start burning fat like crazy to raise the body temperature.
Newborn babies also have a lot of brown adipose tissue: they are not yet able to regulate their body temperature by shivering and sweating and are therefore dependent on the brown fat cells to ensure that they do not become hypothermic. A few years ago, couple Barbara Cannon and Jan Nedergaard from Stockholm University discovered that adults also have brown adipose tissue, just not as much.
no pill
Subsequently, animal experiments showed that mice that were fed too much did not gain weight if their brown fat cells were stimulated. Conclusion: brown adipose tissue melts away fat, without you having to do anything. The pharmaceutical industry then went in search of a pill that stimulates or, even better, increases brown adipose tissue, but so far it has not been found.
Could we perhaps do something ourselves to stimulate or increase brown adipose tissue? The answer is yes: suffering from the cold. Loggers in Northern Finland work in temperatures well below zero for much of the year, and they have significantly more brown adipose tissue than people who work indoors.
Cold inside
Suffering from cold really means being cold. So if you set the thermostat to zero at home in winter, don’t wear a thick sweater and warm slippers. And you go outside in a summer outfit. Because only when your body temperature starts to drop below a certain level, the brown fat cells will start to burn fat. In the long run, the brown fat cells will also multiply, so that they can convert even more fats into heat during the next cold attack.
Kousauna
Nowadays you can also bring your body temperature down in a comfortable way: in the Cryo Sauna your body (not your head) is exposed to -110 to -170 degrees Celsius for 1 to 2 ½ minutes. Unfortunately, people who are already fat do have a problem. They have a thick subcutaneous layer of fat that acts – just like a thick sweater – as insulation. Their body temperature will not drop quickly. So for the time being, suffering from the cold is only a method for slim people to stay slim.
Liesbeth van Rossum is an internist and endocrinologist and Mariette Boon is an internist in training and researcher into brown fat. Together they wrote the bestseller ‘Fat important‘. This duo knows all about body fat and how you can influence it. Do you want to lose weight? Listen to the podcast below before you start a diet, because then you can avoid common mistakes.
This article previously appeared in Plus Magazine December 2019. Not yet a Plus subscriber
Sources):
- Plus Magazine