Brown fat fuels fight against obesity

Experts may have found a new method for assessing adipose tissue function that could be used in the fight against obesity. Thermal imaging of the head, neck, and shoulder area on exposure to a "cool challenge" can indicate the site and position of brown adipose tissue (BAT), the tissue that expends more heat energy than any other type in the body. "Potentially, the more brown fat you have or the more active your brown fat is you produce more heat and as a result you might be less likely to lay down excess energy or food as white fat," explained lead author Michael Symonds (Nottingham University, UK) in a press statement. Currently, the main methods of assessing BAT include positron-emission tomography (PET), computed tomography (CT) scanning, and/or tissue scanning, but these techniques are expensive and require either the administration of radiopharmaceuticals or tissue sampling, explains the team

Fat 'disrupts sugar sensors causing type 2 diabetes'

US researchers say they have identified how a high-fat diet can trigger type 2 diabetes, in experiments on mice and human tissue. Writing in the journal Nature Medicine, they say that fat interferes with the body's sugar sensors. The authors argue that a deeper understanding of the processes involved could help them develop a cure. Diabetes UK said the study was interesting and a "theory worth investigating further". One of the main risk factors for type 2 diabetes is being overweight - rising obesity levels have contributed to a doubling of diabetes cases in the last 30 years

Scientists turn bad fat into 'good' calorie-burning fat

Scientists have found a way to turn bad fat into calorie burning good fat, and say the discovery could lead to new and better treatments for obesity. White or 'bad' fat typically collects around our waists as well as other parts of the body and stores the extra calories we consume. But brown 'good' fat, found in abundance in babies, acts like a power source, burning calories and generating heat. By the time we are adults, most brown fat has disappeared and been replaced by white fat. Scientists at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore initially tried to reduce body fat and weight gain in rats by suppressing the production of an appetite-stimulating protein called neuropeptide Y (NPY) in the part of the brain which helps to regulate hunger and thirst. The findings showed that rats treated this way gained less weight after five weeks, compared with untreated rats which became obese, showing that suppressing NPY led to less calories being consumed. However, when the scientists examined the rats with suppressed NPY, they discovered that some of their white fat had been replaced with brown fat. The scientists speculated that white fat tissue may contain some brown fat cells which become activated when NPY is suppressed. In the future, it may be possible to transplant or inject brown fat stem cells under the skin to burn white fat and stimulate weight loss, the researchers said. Dr Sheng Bi, at the university's school of medicine, who led the research said: "If we could get the human body to turn "bad fat" into "good fat" that burns calories instead of storing them, we could add a serious new tool to tackle the obesity epidemic." The findings are published in the journal Cell Metabolism

A dose of the cold could help weight loss and reduce heart disease

"Scientists have found that exposure to the cold can cause a little known type of fat tissue, called brown adipose tissue, to clear harmful fat molecules from the blood stream. Cold causes the brown fat to burn off these high-calorie molecules, turning them into heat to keep the body warm. Excessive levels of these high-calorie fat molecules, or triglyceride-rich lipoproteins as they are known, from food can cause the arteries to harden and lead to cardiovascular disease. They also cause the build up of unhealthy white fat deposits around the body, which leads to obesity. Researchers at the University Medical Centre Hamburg-Eppendorf, who conducted the research, found that keeping mice at temperatures of around 39.2F (4C) increased the ability of the animal's brown fat to burn off these molecules and reduced levels of body fat"

Can Brown Fat Make You Thin?

"By activating the brown fat in your body, you could lose 9 pounds or more of bad white fat every year - without having to eat less or exercise more. Until recently, scientists thought adults didn't have brown fat. They thought it was there to help babies keep their bodies warm and went away as the body became more muscular. But three new studies in the New England Journal of Medicine now show that more than half of adult men and women have enough brown fat in their bodies to burn off substantial amounts of white fat - if the brown fat somehow is stimulated" - WebMD