Can brown adipose tissue be recruited to combat obesity?
Pharmaceutical companies and academic researchers around the world are attempting to find ways to increase the amount of brown adipose tissue (or just UCP1) in adult humans. The simple thought is this: if we had more brown fat, we would become slimmer. There is, however, at least one important caveat in this line of thought. Studies of isolated brown fat mitochondria (22), isolated brown fat cells, and intact mice all converge on the same conclusion: when not acutely activated, brown adipose tissue does not do anything. This is also the outcome of the study of Ouellet et al. (2). Although the subjects obviously had the same amount of brown adipose tissue when examined under acute cold or warm conditions, the increased brown adipose tissue metabolism was only seen under cold conditions. Thus, what we have to wish for is not only more brown adipose tissue in adult humans — but that it would actually be “on fire” when we eat.
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