Could The Production Of A Certain Type Of Fat Help Prevent Diabetes?

Do people have different types of fat in their body? Is one better than the other? Well, yes and yes. You see, we are all born with brown fat, the good guy, and white fat, his enemy. Brown fat is used by the body to generate energy and produce heat. As we get older, the amount of brown fat in our bodies decrease. The white fat, you can picture a container of Crisco, is stored primarily under the skin in the buttocks and belly and stores energy for future use. Unfortunately, this increases as we age. Even my ever so truthful little girls have loudly and inappropriately commented one too many times on this fact. My face can get as red as a stop sign! Everybody is built differently. This makes some of us more predisposed to gaining weight, which can lead to diabetes. Thanks Mom! If we could figure out a way to expend more energy and store more brown fat, would we be able to fight obesity? This is just what a study at The Joslin Diabetes Center is currently researching.

When placed on a high-fat diet, the B6 mouse,white fat, develops severe obesity, high blood glucose and insulin resistance with extremely high insulin levels. By contrast, the 129 mouse, brown fat, gains on average 30 to 50 percent less weight on either a high-or low-fat diet than the B6 mouse and has been considered resistant to dietary induced obesity and glucose intolerance. In the new study, Dr. Kahn and his colleagues showed that this difference is due to the higher basal energy expenditure in the 129 mouse. When searching for the source of the energy expenditure, the researchers found unexpected clusters of brown fat cells stuck between bundles of muscle fibers in the leg of the mouse. In this case, the 129 mouse had over 100 times more brown fat in muscle than the B6 mouse.

Can we assume that the same is true in humans? Let’s hope so. If the study does correlate to humans, would scientists be able to produce a magic drug to stimulate the good ol’ brown fat and aid in the prevention of diabetes? I know my fingertips would appreciate it!

via eMaxHealth