Can fat make you thin?
Today Harvard Medical School researchers announced that brown fat can make you lose weight.
It seems that there are two different types of adipose tissue: white fat and brown fat. The white fat sits around because it is very lazy and stuffing itself on triglycerides. But brown fat! Oh my goodness! Brown fat has get up and go!
Quoting from the original article at Wired Science: Scientists Make a Fat-Burning Fat:
Brown fat is quite different. It’s full of mitochondria — the body’s energy-producing cellular machines — and burns calories to produce heat.
Abundant in babies, whom it helps keep warm, brown fat is found only in traces in adults. But with a flick of two genetic switches, scientists showed that cells destined to become muscle have the potential to become brown fat.
Emphasis mine.
Asked whether his technique could deprive the body of muscle, Spiegelman said that precursor muscle cells are self-replenishing: Redirect a few into brown fat, and they’ll be quickly replaced.
This is extremely preliminary research but they are showing that:
They are years, perhaps decades, away from research that could turn this into a prescription pill. And of course it might not ever come to that. This is all very new and they are still very far from animal testing.
I find all of this research fascinating and I love knowing more about how the human body works.
But.
Things that freak the crap out of me on this brown fat research.
Edit: men-in-full makes this very important observation in her comment:
Something else to think about – the brain IIRC is “white fat,” stuffed with cholesterol & triglycerides. What if some of that genetic manipulation “leaks” into the brain, and messes with brain fat?
Sounds like a losing proposition to me.
Links to the two Nature articles available online by the Harvard team: Nature: PRDM16 controls a brown fat/skeletal muscle switch, and Nature: New role of bone morphogenetic protein 7 in brown adipogenesis and energy expenditure. A synopsis of each article is available but to read the articles in full will require either a login (if you or your company subscribes) or a payment of $32.00.
Something else to think about – the brain IIRC is “white fat,” stuffed with cholesterol & triglycerides. What if some of that genetic manipulation “leaks” into the brain, and messes with brain fat?
Sounds like a losing proposition to me.
Very good point. Also, there have been tests on mice with drugs that affect receptors in the brain (supposedly to cure people of the fat) and they cause developmental brain damage in adolescent mice.
It’s as if to say that it’s ok to be brain damaged because at least you’ll be thin.
This feels like really scary stuff to me.
Most women would give up their brains to lose weight. And as facetious as that sounds, I believe it to be true.
And it’s the fat girls that are fucked up. Right. (Okay that was facetious. Downright sarcastic.)
You know Roberta we are definitely in the minority — those of us who are trying to be sane in a world screaming that fat kills! fat is ugly!
We need to make a sign… “Save the White Fat!” Seriously, there’s a REASON why our bodies are programmed the way that they are. There’s a REASON why brown fat is more prevalent in *growing infants* than adults.
But nope, anything to make an extra nickel out of the pockets of the fat-fearing public. Sighz.
Oh yeah, and I’m really fond of my brain, so I’m going to have to say NO to having it eaten away by brown fat.
We just need to carefully watch the wording on the signage… (Save the White! White is Right! you get it…)
I feel the same way as you. What would happen if they then found a ‘cure’ for fat. What would that mean? Im finally starting to accept myself and then bam. However, I have heard all this tripe before.