by Robert Preidt
health reporter
Good Exercises For Fat Loss - Body May Change Bad Fat to Good After Exposure to Cold
Thursday, (Health News) - Cold temperatures can lead to unhealthy white fat on the thighs and belly to turn into brown fat that burns calories for the heat of the body, says a new study .
But being obese seems to hinder this process, according to the researchers.
Most adult fat deposits is what is known as white fat, and already believed that only babies have brown fat, which seems to help keep warm.
Previous searches suggested, however, that adults also have some brown fat. Then a study published in 2012 by Harvard researchers determined that brown fat found in adults is not the same as brown fat in babies.
Brown fat in babies arises muscle, but brown fat in adults is actually a "beige" fat that occurs from the "Browning" of white fat, explained the Harvard team.
For the new study, a team of researchers led by Dr. Philip Kern, University of Kentucky of Medicine compared belly fat taken from 55 people during summer and winter. They also examined the fat thigh collected from 16 people after making an ice packet on the skin for 30 minutes.
Fat belly taken from people in winter had higher levels of two genetic markers for brown fat than the fat belly collected in the summer, the study found.
The thigh fat taken after people put an ice packet on their skin also had higher levels of three genetic markers linked to brown fat, reported researchers.
However, these brown fat production effects were blunted in obese people, according to the study released on October 9 in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology
