Brown And Beige Fat in Health and Weightmanagement

Looking slim and healthy can be termed as a global human desire. And we all know that white fat cells store energy. These white fat cells infamously store fat in the belly, thighs and other places of the body. Most of us know only the two kinds of white fat.

* Subcutaneous white fat, is neutral fat. Dubbed “the inch you can pinch” lies directly under the skin.

* Visceral white fat. This “deep fat” wraps around the inner organs and gives off toxins and fatty acids that are swept up by the blood and dumped into the liver. Research suggests that visceral fat pumps out chemical that can increase the risk of cardiovascular disease by promoting insulin resistance and chronic inflammation. Because of its rich blood-flow, visceral fat is very responsive to exercise, far more so than the stubborn subcutaneous fat.

Two scans of a man’s torso. On the left shows extensive areas of red, signifying toxic visceral fat. Subcutaneous body-fat appears yellow. The scans on the right reveals just how much the red areas of visceral fat were reduced by diet and exercise.

Researches also knew that another fat, they called brown adipose tissue (BAT), was found in babies and small mammals, to protect them from the cold by producing heat.

Brown Fat

In 2009, three research groups, one of the Maastricht University, reported they had also found deposits of 'brown' fat in adult humans. Scientists from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, in collaboration with researchers from the Maastricht University isolated a new type of energy using fat cells in adult humans, with potentially great significance for the treatment of obesity. The so-called beige fat cells found in small deposits near the collarbone and along the spine. The cells genetically deviate from brown fat cells, which were found earlier in babies and small mammals. Unlike white fat cells that store fat, brown a nd also beige fat cells use fat to produce heat.

Further research now shows that these so called “beige fat cells,” in their genetic composition differ from brown fat. Both cell types contain large quantities of mitochondria, and the tissue is heavily supplied with blood, which makes up for the beige or brown color. A well-known characteristic of brown fat cells is that they contain a lot of UCP1, a protein that causes the mitochondria to burn fat and produce heat. The newly discovered type of fat cells - the beige fat cells - appear in the first instance, quite similar to white adipose cells, but when they are exposed to cold, effort, or the hormone irisine, they burn calories just as efficient as brown fat cells.

Because of their fat burning properties, the therapeutic potential of both brown and beige fat is big. Even in small amounts, they can burn up large amounts of calories. The authors have shown of the Cell article which increase the production of brown and beige fat by genetic engineering of mice, it has anti-diabetes and anti-obesity effect.

How could you activate brown fat?

Experts say that cold temperatures could activate brown fat. A low fat and a high carbohydrate diet could also be beneficial.

Eating apples with the peel on it could activate brown fat. Apple peel contains ursolic acid which increases muscle mass and brown fat. Cranberries, blueberries, prunes and plums also contain urosolic acid. And herbs like oregano, thyme, lavender and holy basil contain ursolic acid.

Dr Bill Sardi points out that iron deficiency and beta blockers inhibit the production and activity of brown fat. So be careful about these.

According to him, brown fat is activated by omega 3 fatty acids, flax seeds, and fish oil.

Nutritional supplements which maintain brown fat activity are resveratrol, you can find these in red grapes. Garlic, melatonin which is found in pineapple, banana, oranges, oats, sweet corn and tomatoes can help with brown fat maintenance. Curcumin found in turmeric.

Green tea and capsaicin found in hot red pepper can boost brown fat activity levels.

Thermogenesis is an important factor in weight management and obesity. Brown fat has the ability to produce heat, this is thermogenesis. If the calorie intake is too high, brown fat turns this into heat with the objective to burn fat. Brown fat is active, and reduces storage of white fat. People with overweight and people who gain weight quickly, have less active brown fat. Thyroid hormones stimulate thermogenesis, for a healthy weight, it is therefore important to maintain the momentum of metabolism. There is also a relationship between enough/inadequate daylight (melatonine) and brown fat.

What about the hard core bodybuilder?

The hard core bodybuilder is used to build his body and shed his fat with drugs.

Metformin

It has been known that metformin helps to reduce fat in the blood. And reduces fat, I wrote in 2012 a post about it. Contrary to the expectation metformin showed not to work on the liver, which plays an important role in fat metabolism. The cholesterol production and the composition of fats in the liver remained the same. However, the researchers found an increase in the absorption of fats by brown adipose tissue. then the mass of that brown fat decreased, from which could be concluded that the brown fat more actively burned fat.  That lipid metabolism is particularly effective. If the activity of brown fat increases, it leads to an improvement of lipid metabolism. Since a few years, brown fat is in the spotlights. Until that time we thought only babies and mammals that hibernate keep brown fat, which helps them to maintain a normal body temperature. Now it seems that adults also have a small but effective amount.

Sibutramine

With the use of this drug, we are specifically seeing a strong increase in brown adipose tissue thermogenesis (BAT), which is accompanied by bodytemperature increases of .5 – 1 degree Celsius. Elevated body temperature is a good indicator that thermogenesis is being triggered, which you may recall as one of the key things we are looking for when taking clenbuterol. Clenbuterol did not affect energy intake or expenditure, the acute thermogenic response to food, or brown adipose tissue (BAT) activity (assessed from mitochondrial purine nucleotide (GDP) binding). In obese Zucker rats, clenbuterol significantly depressed energetic efficiency and increased the thermogenic response to food and BAT activity in these mutants.

Erectile dysfunction drugs

Researchers from the University of Bonn treated mice with Viagra and made an amazing discovery: The drug converts undesirable white fat cells and could thus potentially melt the unwelcome "spare tire" around the midriff. In addition, the substance also decreases the risk of other complications caused by obesity.

The researchers administered the potency drug to the rodents for seven days. "The effects were quite amazing," says Dr. Ana Kilic, one of Prof. Pfeifer's colleagues. Sildenafil increased the conversion of white fat cells, which are found in human 'problem areas', into beige ones in the animals.

Positive effect on inflammation responses In addition, the researchers observed something else of interest. If white fat cells are further "stuffed"/accumulating lipids, they are increasing in size and can synthesize and release hormones which in turn cause inflammation thus increasing the person’s risk for chronic diseases. Such inflammatory responses may then lead to, e.g., cardio-vascular diseases resulting in heart attacks and strokes, as well as cancer and diabetes. "It seems that sildenafil prevented the fat cells in these mice from getting onto that slippery slope," reports Prof. Pfeifer. Overall, the development of white cells seems to be healthier.

Most hard core bodybuilder already use ED drugs and greatly benefits while weight training as blood (and more oxygen and nutrients) flow to the muscle is increased as well resulting in a “muscle pump”.

In 2016 Maneschi and colleagues showed that tadalafil (Cialis) had the same properties.

The list is endless and new research on BAT pops up almost every day.

That is exactly why scientists worldwide try to find a way to activate brown and beige fats.

Australia: Ever since energy-storing white fat has been shown to convert to metabolically active beige fat, through a process called browning, scientists have been trying to understand how this switch occurs. The immune system has been shown to contribute to activation of brown cells. . Now, researchers from Monash University in Australia and their colleagues have shown that insulin and leptin—two hormones that regulate glucose metabolism and satiety and hunger cues—activate “satiety” neurons in the mouse hypothalamus to promote the conversion of white fat to beige.

Hypothalamic appetite-suppressing proopiomelanocortin (POMC) neurons are known to relay the satiety signals in the bloodstream to other parts of the brain and other tissues to promote energy balance. What is new here is that one way that these neurons promote calorie-burning is to stimulate the browning of white fat. The study identifies how the brain communicates to fat tissue to promote energy dissipation.

The authors show that [insulin and leptin] directly interact in the brain to produce nervous-system signaling both to white and brown adipose tissue. This is a nice demonstration of how the acute and chronic energy status talks to the thermogenic tissues.

Brown fat implants could one day reduce weight gain. Energy-burning 'good' brown fat can be created in the laboratory and implanted in the body to help reduce weight gain and lower glucose levels, scientists have found.

So far, the man-made brown fat has only been implanted in mice, although the result was encouraging to the researchers from the University of California, Berkeley in the US. "This is figuratively and literally a hot area of research right now," said senior author Andreas Stahl. "We are the first to implant in mice an artificial brown-fat depot and show that it has the expected effects on body temperature and beneficial effects on metabolism."

In the study, the research team worked with stem cells that they obtained from the energy storing or 'bad' white fat. Next, they engineered a gel to support stem cells and encourage them to collectively turn into brown fat. Several studies have demonstrated that brown and white fat can change into each other, and that cold temperatures can turn white adipose cells beige. While traditional brown fat is formed during gestation, beige fat is energy-burning fat that started out white.

Another study showed that Brown fat transplant also reverses type 1 diabetes in mice.

My advice go play with her, I’m sure you’ll burn plenty of fat.