Even though it is still a largely esoteric part of the human
anatomy, does brown fat cells now hold the key in our battle against obesity?
By: Ringo Bones
Just look at every survey and study made since the mid-1990s
about the incidence of obesity, chances are figures show that up to 33 percent
of Americans are now obese. Worse still, her “poorer” neighbor
south-of-the-border had shown an increasing rise in childhood obesity cases
since the mid 1990s. Given that a proper diet and exercise alone seems
powerless to halt the slowly - but so even perceptively – increasing cases of
obesity, can another much healthier tactic be used to end this scourge of
civilized mankind?
Since their scrutiny by medical researchers, brown fat cells
had been found out to be active in infants as a way to keep them warm, but brown
fat cells later turn off metabolically in adulthood. During the 1980s, MRI
imaging technicians used to mistake dormant brown fat cells of adult patients
being examined as cancer cells for their cancer-like imaging result in a
typical MRI scanning session. Further studies in the 1990s had also shown that
brown fat cells had kept our Stone-Age ancestors warm but our largely indoor
lifestyle could have metabolically atrophied the main function of our brown fat
cells – which is burning food sourced calories to keep us warm.
Dr. Norbert Stefan, an endocrinologist at Tubingen State
University, specializes in the treatment of morbidly obese persons and persons
with thyroid deficiency that made them morbidly obese. As latest medical
research have shown that brown fat cells are packed with mitochondria and are a
regional main hub for capillaries that controls our body’s core temperature,
Dr. Stefan’s pioneering new method of curing obesity centers around increasing
the metabolic rate of largely dormant brown fat cells in adults to make them
burn more calories even when living out our present-day largely sedentary
lifestyle.
A hormone treatment that’s used to be given to people with
thyroid disorders had recently been trialed to activate the dormant brown fat
cells in adults stricken with obesity, though the. Preliminary results have
shown that more than 90 percent of the trial participants had their overall
weight reduced down to much more healthier levels than before – especially
those patients who also added dieting and exercise to the treatment. Could
revitalizing our atrophied brown fat cells be the key to ending the scourge of
obesity in out increasingly sedentary 21st Century lifestyle?
