Questions About Body Fat That You Surely Did Not Know

Although we think that all fats make us fat, the truth is that in our body there is a type of fat, brown, that helps us burn calories

Body fat is soft, mushy, and gets a bad rap. But fat also plays a vital role in keeping our bodies running smoothly. We store the extra energy in body fat. It keeps us warm and offers cushioning for our internal organs.

In addition, it secretes chemicals that play a role in appetite. Moreover, it helps regulate menstrual cycles.

In other words, in healthy amounts, it is a necessary organ. However, people don’t seem to be very interested in fat except for how to lose it.

Read on to learn about some of the questions about body fat that you may not have known about.

1. Fat has different colors

When you think of fat, you most likely think of a white matter in the abdomen, hips, and thighs that stores energy until you need it.

But there is also brown fat, more common in newborns, as it helps them keep their body temperature stable without shivering. It turns out that adults have small amounts of brown fat too. However, there is still a lot of research to be done to determine exactly what role it plays.

In 2012, different scientists from the University of Sherbrooke published a study that shows the following:

• When the study participants, all men, were exposed to cold temperatures, the brown fat on their bodies helped keep them warm by using white fat for fuel. In other words, the brown fat burned the white fat to give the body necessary energy and heat.

2. Not everyone has brown fat.

However, people who are obese have almost no brown fat. Researchers are studying whether a lack of brown fat is what causes obesity or whether extra white body fat is what prevents the activation of brown fat.

According to researcher Shingo Kajimura from the UCSF Diabetes Center, he said that adults have about 50 grams of brown fat that can burn the energy equivalent to about 4.5 kilograms of white fat per year.

However, people begin to lose brown fat in their late 40s and early 50s. It is suspected that this could be related to obesity and age.

• Kajimura has been testing brown fat in mice to see if it is capable of activating or inhibiting the growth of brown fat. He explains that his team has found an inhibitor to stop the enzyme that helps fat grow. Now he ‘s in search of the brown fat activator, which he hopes could lead to a cure for obesity.

• Nutritional biochemist Shawn Talbott said that the amount of brown fat in humans is so small that it cannot be considered capable of burning calories or keeping our bodies warm.
• On the other hand, Kajimura said that a drug that stimulates the energy-burning properties of brown fat is a “realistic future” if the research continues.

3. Fat keeps us warm

All fat cells, not just brown ones, can sense temperature directly and respond to cold by releasing their energy in the form of heat, according to a 2013 study reported by ScienceNOW.

4. Exercise can change the behavior of the DNA of fat cells

The amount of fat our body carries is determined in part by genetics. Still, researchers at the Lund University Diabetes Center in Sweden found that exercise may play a role in turning on or off certain genes involved in storing fat.

• The researchers aspirated fat cells from dozens of sedentary but healthy Swedish men.
• They were then put on a six-month regimen of movement or aerobics classes twice a week.
• By the end of six months, the men had lost weight and were healthier.
• But not only that, many of the fat cell genes had also been altered. Some of them have to do with fat storage and the risk for the development of obesity or diabetes.

5. Not all fat cells are the same

Some people are obese and metabolically healthy, while others have metabolic diseases such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol levels.

It turns out that you can see these differences at the cellular level. A new study in the journal Diabetology suggested that fat cells from unhealthy obese people look and act differently than fat cells from healthy obese people.

1. Instead of producing new cells to store more fat, the original fat cells in unhealthy obese people only swell to their breaking point. Which leads to inflammation and fat accumulation in organs such as the liver and heart.
2. Fat cells in healthy obese people, however, are smaller. Also, they create new fat cells when more fat is needed to be stored.

6. Human body fat is full of potential stem cells

Those stem cells are similar to those derived from embryos.

In 2009, researchers at the Stanford School of Medicine found that human fat removed during liposuction contained versatile cells that can be induced to become pluripotent stem cells or cells that can become fat, bone, or muscle.

The process was easier than converting skin cells to stem cells.

7. Fat cells need sleep too

By skimping on sleep, you could be hurting your body’s ability from fat to respond to insulin. All of this could lead to weight gain or diabetes in the future.

Researchers at the University of Chicago Medicine did the following experiment:

• They recruited seven young, lean and healthy people to participate in the study.
• The first week, they spent 8.5 hours in bed for four consecutive nights.
• A month later, they spent just 4.5 hours in bed for four consecutive nights.

• During the two sleep sessions, the food intake was identical.
• At the end of each four-day period, the researchers removed fat cells from the volunteers’ abdomen. This is how they measured how they responded to insulin.
• After four nights of short sleep sessions, the fat cells’ insulin sensitivity was reduced by 30 percent.

In conclusion

Fat can cause problems such as obesity, however, not everything that this entails is negative. Fat, for its part, has properties and effects on the human body that are positive and we must learn what they are.

If you have doubts about your fat level, we recommend you see your doctor so that he can assess it and prescribe the most appropriate treatment.

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