There are two types of fat in our body, white and brown. Researchers have shown that, thanks to a well-known examination, MRI, that we can locate brown fat. However, it burns a lot of calories instead of storing them like white fat. By increasing its production, we could help fat people lose weight.
White fat is the one we all know. But it has been known for a very long time that there is another, brown in color, present in all mammals. It is this which allows certain animals to winter for long months without eating.
We are mammals, of course, but not especially marmots …
Responsible for protecting the newborn from the cold
It has long been known that brown fat is found in appreciable amounts in newborns, where it is used to keep body temperature at an acceptable level. The newborn in fact spends 37 ° C of the mother’s womb, at an average temperature of about 25 °. However, this newborn does not yet have the ability to shiver, which is a natural warming reflex for humans. Nature has entrusted this work of internal heating, in newborns, to brown fat …
We lose this brown fat as we age.
Theoretically, 4 weeks after birth. It was therefore believed that brown fat was not present in adults. However, in recent years, surprise; work has shown that it was always present and that it lodged in certain places, such as the neck, between the collarbone and the shoulder, or even the armpits. But, and this is what is new, a recent study shows that thanks to an increasingly well-known examination, MRI, we are able to highlight it. Surprise, we found that our body contains much more so-called inactive fat, than we thought.
Ferrugineuse!
The white fat cell is very simple. Basically, a droplet of fat equals one cell. That of brown fat contains several droplets which are rich in iron to release a lot of energy. It is this iron that gives this brown color. This cell also contains many more blood vessels because it needs a lot of oxygen to “burn”.
It is this property that is interesting: brown cells burn calories while white cells store them.
Brown fat is a source of heat and regulates body temperature because it contains many particles that convert energy from sugars into energy that the body can use. The researchers therefore calculated that a cube of brown fat, the size of a sugar, activated for a year, could burn 3 to 4 kg of white fat.
Learn to activate this fat
Unfortunately, we do not yet know how to activate this brown fat … But if scientists manage to increase the production of brown fat and activate it, this would open up prospects in the treatment of obesity and diabetes.
Inserm researchers, using these famous stem cells which know how to do everything and which we now talk about almost every week, have understood how these white or brown cells are made. They revealed a substance, present in large quantities in brown cells, which, if put together with white cell precursors, transforms them into browns. Which is already a real lead.
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