People reflexively think all body fat is bad.
You might even think so, but is this the case?
In this article, I’ll be doing a deep dive on why there’s a lot more nuance to the subject of body fat. This is a fascinating area because it displays the wisdom of your body.
This is likely the first time many of you have heard about this.
Body Fat As An Organ
Yes, you read that correctly.
Adipose tissue, otherwise known as body fat, is a connective tissue that extends throughout your body. It’s primarily known for storing/releasing energy and providing insulation.
But what you likely don’t know is that it’s an active organ in your endocrine system.
Adipose tissue contains both nerve cells and blood vessels. It communicates through hormone signals with other organs throughout your body, serving several important functions in regulating overall health.
It goes to show that if you have too much or too little of it through an unhealthy and unsustainable lifestyle, dysfunction will occur.
Here’s a list of functions body fat is responsible for:
Energy storage and release
Insulation from cold and heat
Cushioning around your soft organs
Regulating your hunger and satiety
Maintaining your energy balance
Regulating your glucose and cholesterol
Maintaining your insulin sensitivity.
Generating thermogenic heat
Contributing to your immunity
Metabolizing your sex hormones
By secreting hormones and responding to others, adipose tissue communicates with other organs throughout your body along with your central nervous system.
Adipose tissue also has its own active immune cells, which respond to certain stimuli by clearing out dead fat cells or producing an inflammatory response.
Metabolic disease results from a breakdown in these functions.
The Different Types of Body Fat
There are three different forms of body fat:
White Fat
White adipose tissue is the most abundant type of fat, appearing throughout your body as subcutaneous fat, visceral fat and bone marrow fat.
It provides energy storage, insulation from extreme temperatures and cushioning around soft organs. It also includes other cell types, called stromal vascular fraction (SVF) cells. Together, these cells secrete hormones that help regulate energy balance, hunger/satiety, metabolism and the inflammatory response.
There’s a level of white fat that we all need, but gaining weight through the consumption of hyper palatable processed “food,” sleep deprivation and other nasty habits breaks the harmony your body seeks.
As with everything, we seek harmony and balance.
Visceral Fat (Also White Fat)
I’ve covered this topic in the past, but this form of body fat is the one you can’t see.
It develops in and around the organs which makes it particularly nasty because it release inflammatory cytokines that wreak havoc on your physiology.
For this reason, it’s known as “deep” fat because of where it’s stored.
If you have a large belly and waist, that’s a clear sign you’re storing dangerous visceral fat. While it’s most noticeable in obese individuals, anyone can have visceral fit (even skinny people) without knowing it.
Visceral fat is known to be highly inflammatory which is a large reason why people suffer from all sorts of chronic inflammatory conditions.
If we can learn how to burn this type of body fat from the perspective of fundamentals and using the 80/20 principle, we’re going to be in better health and drastically reduce our chance of experiencing an adverse event years from now.
Brown Fat
Brown fat is mostly present in infancy and diminishes with age.
It’s located primarily in your upper back. Brown adipocytes (fat cells) are more complex than white adipocytes. The iron content in these organelles gives brown fat cells their color.
These organelles enable the brown adipocytes to generate a large amount of heat which is the primary function of brown fat — to generate heat through a process called non-shivering thermogenesis, which helps protect infants from hypothermia.
One of the things that affects how many calories we burn every day and our body composition, regardless of how we exercise and what we eat, is how “activated” our brown fat cells are.
Here’s the thing:
Brown fat never goes away completely as we age.
It’s still detectable in adults and has important roles in body weight regulation.
Furthermore, it contains mitochondria.
It acts similarly to muscle tissue in many ways, and actually uses white fat for fuel at times. Within brown fats mitochondria, heat is able to be generated that helps regulate the body’s internal temperature in response to the changing environment outside.
Beige Fat
This type of fat can also burn calories rather than store them, just like brown fat.
Even in small amounts, brown and beige fat can burn large amounts of calories.
The Health Benefits of Brown Fat
It’s incredible what brown adipose tissue can do for human health.
Let’s explore what we know so far.
It effectively burns a lot of calories
Brown fat cells burn more calories than any other type of fat cells. It does this to regulate our internal temperature and help us survive in cold climates.
Even the American Diabetes Association has jumped into the action by showing it can impact daily energy expenditure and be an effective therapy to fight obesity.
It decreases dangerous visceral fat
Brown fat can decrease white fat stores, which will dramatically lower your risk for all chronic diseases.
Some research has shown that by increasing brown fat purposefully in obese or overweight adults, excess stores of white fat might be reduced naturally.
It improves heart health
Studies show brown fat has benefits for your heart by including naturally lowering cholesterol and triglyceride levels. I’m not as concerned about the lowering of cholesterol, but to see a reduction in triglycerides?
That’s big.
It’s believed that brown fat can fuel itself with circulating triglycerides taken up from the bloodstream.
It stabilizes blood sugar
Stockholm University showed that brown fat cells are capable of altering glucose uptake, drawing sugar out of the blood to fuel muscle cells.
This helps to stabilize blood sugar levels.
Most importantly, it can lower your risk for type 2 diabetes.
Brown fat’s signal pathway differs from the signal pathway triggered by insulin, which means it’s possible that brown fat can be activated and especially benefit patients who already have type 2 diabetes and are not responsive to insulin’s effects.
Now that we have the context set, here’s where we get into the fun stuff.
How To Increase Brown Fat
It was previously thought that the only way to get the most out of brown fat was to expose ourselves to uncomfortably cold temperatures, but new research shows there are more ways available.
Get Cold
This is one of the most effective ways to activate brown fat.
The colder, the better.
You can rely on ice baths, cold showers, or just generally exposing yourself to colder temperatures outside with less clothing.
Small increases in the amount of cold you’re exposed to can make a big enough difference to influence your body composition. This is why people who endure colder temperatures have tighter skin and less body fat.
I found this interesting as well..
At first, they were burning around 108 extra calories during the two hours, but after six weeks, they were up to burning 289 extra calories on average in the cold.
It shows that a build-up of cold tolerance can activate certain genes which boost beige or brown fat.
Routine Training
Exercise has now been shown to increase brown fat activity.
Training can boost UCP1 activity in brown fat and also have a positive effect of the release of hormones that control body fat and lean muscle mass development.
Results from one study shows that exercise can alter production of the hormone called irisin which has the ability to help white fat essentially mimic brown fat’s positive effects.
Your muscle cells release irisin after being active, helping you to stabilize blood sugar levels, control body weight and recover from activity by bringing nutrients like glucose into cells.
Follow Your Hunger & Satiety Signals Appropriately
Brain neurons regulate the hunger hormones including ghrelin and leptin which play a part in maintaining brown fat.
Studies done by the Yale School of Medicine suggest that these neurons that control appetite can also help encourage white fat to act more like brown fat.
Under-eating can also be problematic for brown fat because it can slow the rate at which your brown fat works. It’s important to stay well-fed with nutrient dense food outside of the prolonged fasting context.
Get Excellent Sleep
Endogenous melatonin actually has an incredible impact on brown fat.
Melatonin helps lower obesity in rats even without affecting food intake and activity, suggesting it’s the brown fat that’s responsible, thanks to its thermogenic effect.
You know my stance on melatonin supplements.
I’m not a fan.
Instead, set your lifestyle up to be aligned with circadian biology which I’ve covered in the past. BRIGHTER DAYS, DARKER NIGHTS.
Through these tips and a holistic, sustainable lifestyle.. you’ll be able to harness the power of brown/beige fat while also keeping excess visceral and white fat at bay.
“What if I don’t know where to start?”
Then join The 80/20 Health System.
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Much love,
Zaid