Brown adipose tissue or brown fat is abundant in newborns, providing them with body heat, and naturally decreases with age. Recent studies have shown that adults with detectable levels of brown fat have lowered rates of obesity and higher resting metabolic rates. In the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Anouk van der Lans and colleagues at Maastrricht University and Takeshi Yoneshiro and colleagues at Hokkaido University investigate therapies for increasing brown fat activity in adults.
Both groups show that a regimen of daily exposure to cold temperatures increased both brown adipose tissue and metabolic rates. Subjects that were exposed to daily cold for 6 weeks also showed a reduction in body fat mass. These findings indicate that brown fat activity in adults can be increased and that cold acclimation and capsinoid ingestion maybe valuable strategies in the fight against obesity.
Recruited Brown Adipose Tissue as an Anti-Obesity Agent in Humans
ACCOMPANYING ARTICLE: Cold acclimation recruits human brown fat and increases nonshivering thermogenesis