Exposing your body to cold temperatures could stimulate it to produce brown fat, a type of adipose tissue capable of assisting in the weight loss process.
Not everyone knows it, but the fatty tissue in our body can have different colors – white and brown – and each one of them serves a different purpose. Contrary to the well-known white fat, brown fat can be an ally when it comes to losing weight.
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What is white fat?
White adipose tissue — also called WAT — is the standard fat for life. It is responsible for storing our energy in large fat droplets that accumulate around the body, explains the Healthline portal.
The accumulation of fat helps keep your body warm by providing thermal insulation to the organs. However, too much white fat is not a good thing for the human body. In addition to leading to obesity, it is associated with an increased risk of heart disease, diabetes, and other conditions.
What is brown fat?
For its part, brown adipose tissue – also called BAT, stores our energy in smaller fat droplets. In addition, it is rich in mitochondria, structures known as the power plants of our body, which use fat to generate heat, explains the scientific journal Discover.
Burning brown fat warms up the body without shaking it, a process called thermogenesis. During this process, BAT fat also burns calories. Thus, this type of adipose tissue is considered a possible treatment for obesity and some metabolic syndromes.
The scientific community used to believe that only babies had brown fat in their bodies and it disappeared when people reached adulthood. What is known now, however, is that even adults have small stores of brown fat, which can be increased.
How to get more good fat?
There are certain medications that can cause browning of white fat, however, these drugs are also associated with some side effects, so their use exclusively for this purpose is not recommended.
So how do you increase brown fat levels?
Exposing the body to cold can stimulate it to produce BAT fat. A research suggests that two hours daily exposure to temperatures of about 19 ° C may be sufficient to convert the available fat in body fat brown.
So taking a cold shower, lowering the thermostat in your house a few degrees, or going outside in cold weather are steps that could help create more brown grease.
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Physical activity, meanwhile, helps the body make a protein called irisin. Some experiments carried out with mice suggest that this protein is able to help transform the white fat brown.
Although the health benefits of exercise are old knowledge in science, there is currently not enough research to prove that they generate more BAT fat in humans.