How Now, Brown Fat? Scientist Are Onto a New Way to Lose Weight
http://healthland.time.com/2012/01/26/how-now-brown-fat-scientist-are-onto-a-new-way-to-lose-weight/
I have read about this ‘brown fat’ conundrum many times. I am coming to the conclusion that what has really set us apart from our ancestors is two fold: 1) we used to have greatly restricted caloric intake during the winter and it appears that that annual stress actually helps clear out the arteries and keep our cells ‘younger’ and 2) by insulating our houses and bodies (i.e., getting out of the weather) we have ‘turned against’ millions of years of evolution optimizing our body’s for conditions we (as a species) no longer experience. As such, I suspect that starting a few thousand years ago (maybe as much as 10K) humans who had lost the ability to retain brown fat as adults were no longer at a disadvantage (meaning that up until that time, if they had lost such ability they would likely die before they could breed), so that ‘feature’ started to creep into our population.
I suppose that you might be able to encourage the formation of the brown fat as they suggest, by subjecting yourself to cold and misery, but really, anyone that dedicated is also going to be able to eat less and exercise more, which is the only tried and true way of shedding the lard. Clearly, if you drop the temp in your house, but put sweaters on to compensate, you are just freezing your family for naught. I think in today’s society (at least in what is left of the middle class in the US), this is meaningless information. Interesting, but meaningless, at least at this time.
Now, obesity is a very complex issue and there are no single ‘magic bullet’ solutions, and I am convinced this won’t change the overall dynamic. However, if a way to encourage the body to produce brown fat AND trigger that fat to regularly metabolize white fat, then I can see this being a way to help people reduce weight. However, an obvious side effect to me is that being so treated during the summer would probably be miserable as you are probably going to feel like you have a strong fever and be drenched in sweat all the time (sort of like how I feel whenever I visit the Philippines).
