Tag: Brown Fat

To say that its cold outside is vastly understating the extreme temperatures that have descended this week.   Once you hit single digits and negatives, it’s basically like being in a freezer with the fan on.    

Here is some good news though, you can still drop some weight despite the frozen fingers of the arctic scraping at your windows!   We are all born with something called “brown fat”, which is much different than your everyday white fat.  

White adipose tissue (WAT) is the standard fat that is commonly known. It stores energy in large fat nodules that accumulate around the body. The accumulation of this fat helps keep us warm by providing insulation for our organs. 

Brown adipose tissue (BAT) helps maintain body temperature when it’s too cold.  As newborns, we have a good pocket of this mostly behind the shoulder blades, because infants cannot shiver and this acts as a built-in heater. We lose most of it as we get older and form a shiver response to cold temperatures. 

Brown Fat is jam packed with mitochondria, the main energy molecule used by the cell and that is how it gets its color. When brown fat burns, it creates heat without the shivering in a process referred to as thermogenesis. It is during this process; the brown fat also burns calories.  

Everyone has some brown fat you’re born with, and this form is called “constitutive” brown fat. Another form of brown fat is “recruitable.” Meaning it can change to brown fat under the right circumstances. This type is found in muscles and white fat throughout your body.  

Some ways to increase that brown fat : 

1. Exposing the body to cool/cold temperatures may help recruit more brown fat cells. A suggested 2 hours of exposure each day to temperatures around 66°F (19°C) may be enough to turn recruitable fat brown.  I’m not suggesting we step out into the arctic air for 2 hours, that feels a bit much to drop a few pounds.  Let’s get the outside temps more agreeable before we consider a two hour venture outside!  

2. Taking a cold shower or ice bath.   While neither one sounds appealing, perhaps just slowing turning down the hot tap while in the shower and gradually working your way up to the cold would be better than just diving right under a spray of icy water.   

3. Knock the temp down a few degrees in the house.   The electric bill will at least be lighter!  

Increasing Brown Fat is not a method suggested for weight loss primarily.  Consider it an add-on bonus to what you already have in play.  Acclimate yourself to the cooler temperatures, convert some of the white fat to brown fat.   Every little bit helps on the journey.