Growing fat to get slim

• Autores: Chloe Lambert
• Localización: New scientist, ISSN 0262-4079, Nº. 3017, 2015, págs. 32-35
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • While normal white fat stubbornly stores excess calories on hips, bellies and thighs, over the last few years a picture has emerged of a different kind of fat--one which, paradoxically, might help people to lose weight. This is brown fat: it burns calories rather than storing them. What makes brown fat so interesting is its ability to burn food directly to produce heat, whereas energy extracted from food is usually stored first, then released during activity such as exercise. It can produce 300 times more heat per gram than any other tissue in the body. This is because brown fat cells have a disproportionately high number of mitochondria--the small energy producing structures in cells--which also gives the stuff its eponymous color. These mitochondria are slightly different from those in other cells, too, because they contain a protein called thermogenin, or UCP1, which enables brown fat to turn energy to heat directly. Here, Lambert examines whether humans could make use of brown fat to help with weight control