Brown Fat and The Secret to Weight Loss

What is Brown Fat?

Brown fat, known to science as brown adipose tissue (BAT) is not a fat storer but a fat shrinker. Very simply, white fat or white adipose tissue (WAT) stores energy and calories while brown fat burns energy and calories. Brown fat breaks down blood sugar (glucose) and fat molecules to create heat and help maintain body temperature. Because brown fat burns calories to generate heat, it is often referred to as the “good” fat. Its brown color comes from its densely packed mitochondria which work 24/7 to burn calories from your fat stores and the food you eat into pure, natural energy. Brown fat (as much as 5% of their body weight) helps keep newborns warm and it’s the same fat that bears use to stay warm when they hibernate.

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History

For decades no one knew how much brown fat adults retain, or how active it might be. In 2009 three different groups independently published papers in the New England Journal of Medicine confirming their discovery of active brown fat cells in healthy adults.1 Fifty grams of maximally activated brown fat accounts for 20 percent of your resting energy expenditure," explained Dr. Aaron Cypress of the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, who led one of the studies. "If you add that up, that's 400 or 500 calories per day. So maybe a little of this good fat could go a long way. Also o appearing in the same issue of the NEJM, a work conducted by a team at Maastricht University Medical Center found that obese men had less brown fat than subjects who were leaner.

Weight Loss

The discovery of substantial amounts of active brown fat being present in adult humans raised expectations for the development of new anti-obesity treatments by targeting this tissue.2 In a 2012 study, six men remained inactive for three hours while wearing a cold suit that circulated water with a temperature of 64.4 degrees Fahrenheit over their skin—cold enough to lower their body temperature without causing too much shivering. That way the researchers could be sure that most of the extra calories burned during those three hours were expended by brown fat cells rather than quivering muscles. In another study Japanese researchers asked 12 young men with lower than average amounts of active brown fat to sit in a 63 degree F room for two hours a day for six weeks. At first, the study participants burned an average of 108 extra calories in the cold compared with more normal indoor temperatures. After six weeks, however, their bodies were burning an extra 289 calories in the cold.

Don't like cold temperatures? Investigators have identified several molecules that may be able to stimulate such “browning” of white fat without the need for cold. “browning” of white adipose tissue (WAT) has gained increasing attention in the research area as an alternative method in stimulating energy dissipation.3,4 Some food ingredients have shown to be involved in white-to-brown adipose tissue conversion and in calorie burning.

Overall health benefits

Further research has shown that brown fat improves metabolism. Funded by the NIH’s National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) and the Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development among others, a team led by Dr. Shingo Kajimura at the University of California, San Francisco, found that the men with high brown fat activity had reduced levels of compounds called branched chain amino acids (BCAAs) in their bloodstreams. This change wasn’t seen in the men with low brown fat activity. Experiments in obese mice confirmed that cold exposure reduced BCAAs in rodents with brown fat, too. BCAAs include three essential amino acids—valine, leucine, and isoleucine—that are important for many functions in the body. For example, your muscles can use BCAAs to provide energy during exercise. However, past studies have linked high levels of BCAAs with obesity, insulin resistance, and type 2 diabetes in people and rodents. “The findings suggest that boosting SLC25A44 activity, thereby enhancing BCAA utilization, may be a promising strategy for removing excess BCAAs from the bloodstream and potentially treating conditions such as obesity and diabetes,” Kajimura said.5,6

Yet another study published in Nature Medicine in 2021 linked brown fat with cardiometabolic health. Individuals with BAT had lower prevalence of cardiometabolic diseases, and the presence of BAT was independently correlated with lower odds of type 2 diabetes, dyslipidemia, coronary artery disease, cerebrovascular disease, congestive heart failure and hypertension. These findings were supported by improved blood glucose, triglyceride and high-density lipoprotein values.7

Targeting brown adipose tissue (BAT) levels

Some products like Exipure target low brown adipose tissue to boost BAT levels. A tiny increase in BAT means a huge jump in calorie and fat burning and energy levels, and overall health benefits. Each Exipure capsule contains 8 clinically-proven ingredients that increase calorie-burning brown adipose tissue (BAT).

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1 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa0810780

2 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213231717302410

3 https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/supercharging-brown-fat-to-battle-obesity/

4 https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphys.2018.01954/full

5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1503-x

6 https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/how-brown-fat-improves-metabolism

7 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-1126-7