This Trick
May Force Your Body to Burn 400-500 Extra Calories/Day
Story at-a-glance
- Brown fat is a heat-generating type of fat that burns
energy instead of storing it, acting more like muscle than fat
- Research has shown that brown fat can be activated to
burn more fat by cooling your body
- Studies have also shown that animals convert white fat
into brown fat simply by exercising. The conversion is triggered by an
enzyme called irisin, which is released by the muscles during exercise.
It’s still unclear whether this phenomenon is true for humans as well, but
humans do have the same protein
- According to Tim Ferriss, author of The Four-Hour Body,
you may be able to increase your fat burning potential by as much as 300
percent simply by adding ice therapy to your dieting strategy. You can do
this by placing an ice pack on your upper back and upper chest for 30
minutes a day; drinking about 500 ml of ice water each morning; taking ice
cold showers; and/or immersing yourself in an ice bath three times a week
By Dr. Mercola
For a number of years, scientists
have been studying "brown fat."
Brown fat is a heat-generating type
of fat that burns energy instead of storing it, and this may have
important implications when it comes to weight loss.
Human newborns have a supply of
brown fat to keep warm, but by adulthood they lose most of their stores of it.
Brown fat has been located in the
neck area, around blood vessels (helping to warm your blood), and
"marbled" in with white fat in visceral fat tissue.
In a new study, scientists found
that they were able to activate the brown fat still present in adult men by
exposing them to cold temperatures.
The men burned more calories when
cooled, and lost white fat, the kind that causes obesity.
According to the study's authors1:
"That adult humans possess
brown fat is now accepted - but is the brown fat metabolically active? Does
human brown fat actually combust fat to release heat?
... Ouellet et al. demonstrate that
metabolism in brown fat really is increased when adult humans are exposed to
cold.
This boosts the possibility that
calorie combustion in brown fat may be of significance for our metabolism and,
correspondingly, that the absence of brown fat may increase our proneness to
obesity - provided that brown fat becomes activated not only by cold but also
through food-related stimuli."
Research has shown that certain
groups of people tend to have more brown fat than others, and there are direct
correlations between the activation of brown fat and metabolic measures of good
health. For example:
·
Slender people have more brown fat
than obese people do
·
Younger people have more brown fat
than elderly people, and
·
People with normal blood sugar
levels have more brown fat than those with high blood sugar
Cold Temps Boost Brown Fat
Activation
Swedish research published in 2009
also found that cold temperatures increased the activity in the subjects' brown
fat regions, measured using positron-emission tomography (PET).2
In fact, cold-induced glucose uptake was increased by a factor of 15!
While the Swedish researchers dipped the subject's foot into an ice bath
while in the scanner, another similar study by researchers in the Netherlands
chilled their subjects in a 16 degrees Celsius/61 degrees Fahrenheit room for
two hours. They too found an uptick in brown fat activity.
Based on animal models, researchers
estimate that just 50g of brown fat (which is less than what most study
volunteers have been found to have) could burn about 20 percent of your daily
caloric intake—and more if 'encouraged.'
According to a previous article on
WebMD3:
"Kirsi A. Virtanen, MD, PhD, of
the University of Turku, Finland, and colleagues analyzed brown fat in five
young men. One of the men had about 2.2 ounces of brown fat. "If
the brown [fat] in this example were fully activated, it would burn an amount
of energy equivalent to approximately 4.1 kilograms [9 pounds]" of fat
over the course of a year, the researchers calculate. And that's a low estimate,
as this assumes only 50 percent activation of the brown fat."
Activating Your Brown Fat Might Help
to Reduce Your Love Handles
No wonder people are anxious to tap
into the fat burning capabilities of brown fat! Interestingly, brown fat
actually behaves more like muscle than fat, and as you will soon see, there's
good reason for that.
One of the researchers in this area
is Bruce Spiegelman, PhD, with Harvard University's Dana-Farber Cancer
Institute. Over the past five years, his research team has published at least
five studies4
on the topic of brown fat, and in one, they identified a sort of master switch
that promotes the production of brown fat. In 2008, they showed that the
molecular switch, known as PRDM16, regulates whether immature cells will turn
into brown fat or into muscle cells. In an interview with WebMD,
Spiegelman said5:
"We showed that brown fat and
white fat have completely different origins. Brown fat is derived from muscle.
That was a huge surprise."
Another set of researchers from
Harvard's Joslin Diabetes Center found another trigger for brown fat—a protein
called BMP-7, which also promotes bone growth6.
The researchers discovered that this protein acts as a growth factor for brown
fat. Mice treated with BMP-7 protein grew up to have more brown fat than
untreated mice, and the treated mice also used up more energy.
Needless to say, researchers are
excited about the potential for a medical intervention that can help people
develop more brown fat. But I would be cautious of any solution in a pill form.
Instead, I'd suggest trying out some of the non-invasive methods that have been
found to promote brown fat production and its activation. For example, in one
mouse study, the animals converted white fat into brown fat simply by
exercising.
According to Time Magazine7:
"During exercise, the
animals' muscles released a newly discovered enzyme called irisin, which
triggered the conversion. It's not clear whether the same phenomenon is true in
people, though humans do have the same protein. However, the brown fat that is
easily observed in humans tends not to be the kind that is derived from white
fat."
Ice Therapy: a Viable Strategy?
Tim Ferriss, author of The
Four-Hour Work Week, also published a book called The Four-Hour Body8,
which includes the concept of activating your brown fat to boost fat burning by
exposing yourself to frigid temperatures. He claims you can increase your fat
burning potential by as much as 300 percent simply by adding ice therapy to
your dieting strategy. A LiveStrong article backs up Ferriss' claim stating9:
"A NASA scientist told ABC News
that's no hyperbole. In studying the effects of temperature on astronauts, he
saw people's metabolism boost by 20 percent in environments as mild as 60
degrees. A Joslin researcher told National Public Radio that 3 oz. of brown fat
could burn 400 to 500 calories daily."
So, how does Ferriss' Ice Therapy
work? Well, by cooling your body down with ice, you're essentially forcing it
to burn much more calories by activating your brown fat as the studies above
can attest to. His suggestions, from easy to 'hard core,' include the
following. Do advance slowly! It may be inadvisable to go straight to the ice
bath if you're not used to it!:
·
Place an ice pack on your upper back
and upper chest for 30 minutes per day (you can do this while relaxing in front
of the TV for example)
·
Drinking about 500 ml of ice water
each morning
·
Cold showers
·
Immersing yourself in ice water up
to your waist for 10 minutes, three times per week. (Simply fill your tub with
cold water and ice cubes)
Four More Ways to Boost Your
Metabolism
Everyone's metabolism is different,
but you can generally speed it up or slow it down within a reasonably short
amount of time by making changes to your diet and lifestyle. Aside from
resorting to ice therapy, the following common-sense strategies will also help
boost your metabolism to encourage weight loss:
1. Avoid sugar (particularly fructose) and grains as they are
the leading cause of insulin- and leptin-resistance, which directly affect your
hunger levels, your fat-burning potential, and consequently your weight
2. Listen to your hunger, and eat a healthy meal or snack when
hunger calls
3. Implement a well-rounded exercise regimen that includes:
a. strength training to build muscle (for every pound of muscle
that you gain, your body burns 50-70 calories more per day), and
4. Use healthy outlets for stress and negative emotions. Tools
like the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) are your friend
and ally when it comes to losing weight. Meditation, prayer, journaling and
even exercise can also provide positive outlets for stress.
Remember, the idea is not to deprive
your body or starve yourself into a size 2. The goal is to establish a healthy
relationship with food, one that will keep you satisfied, nourished and slim,
all at the same time.
