INJECT FAT TO BURN FAT?: Researchers have found two molecular switches that create so-called brown fat--which promotes energy burning rather than storing--opening the door to new therapies to combat obesity.
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What if the best way to conquer obesity is to have fat injected into your stomach?
According to two studies in Nature, that may be the future of weight loss treatments—provided you use the right kind of fat.
When we think of the stuff, we usually call to mind white fat, which stores calories and migrates to our waistlines. But fat isn't all bad. So-called brown fat releases the energy it captures and promotes calorie burning—and thus weight loss.
The two Nature studies describe two different proteins that control the creation of brown fat cells from immature muscle and fat cells in mice. The findings offer new hope in the fight against obesity—a condition, which, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, grips two thirds of American adults and 17 percent of young people aged 19 and under.
Conceivably, drugs that make more of these proteins could jump-start a conversion of white fat cells to brown fat cells. Alternatively, according to Bruce Spiegelman, co-author of one of the new studies and a biologist at Boston's Dana–Farber Cancer Institute, brown fat cells could one day be transplanted into an obese person's abdomen—where their white fat stores live—to fuel the calorie-burning processes.
"The white fat is the main energy storage in our body," says Yu-Hua Tseng, a biologist at Joslin Diabetes Center at Harvard University and co-author of the other Nature study. "The white cells can release free fatty acids, and they are moved over to the brown fat to be burned," resulting in weight loss.
In humans, most brown fat disappears shortly after birth—when it has fulfilled its role of keeping a newborn's body temperature stable. In mice, however, it persists until adulthood, primarily between the shoulder blades, where it performs the same internal climate-control function. According to Tseng, even though mature brown fat cells are few and far between in the human body, immature cells that could grow into them (so-called progenitors) are available.
Tseng's group used a growth protein that in previous work by her lab was also shown to drive the production of brown fat cells by turning on a fleet of genes that promote the development of brown fat.
When she and her team introduced the protein into mice—by attaching it to a disabled common cold virus and letting the pathogen infect the animal's cells—it caused the formation of more brown fat and led to mice that were leaner than those that didn't receive the protein. In addition, Tseng's group showed that immature fat cells transfused into mice produce scores of the protein, and that the cells developed into brown fat, rather than white.
Spiegelman's study found a close relationship between brown fat and muscle by identifying a protein that determines whether a young cell will grow into a one or the other. When the levels of this biological switch are elevated in cells, the cells mature into brown fat; when it is lower than normal, these cells become muscle.
From his own previous work, however, he has shown that high levels of the protein also reprogram white fat cells into brown ones. "We and everyone else thought this was some sort of choice in the [fat] lineage," he says. "It was surprising that brown fat is part of the muscle lineage."
Both groups are moving forward with their target proteins to determine whether they are able to induce the formation of brown fat in obese mice, stimulate calorie burning, and cause no other adverse metabolic effects. "As we think about strategies to treat obesity and elevate [protein levels], we want to know the other forms of biology that it might be involved in," says Spiegelman.
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13 Comments
Add CommentThis is all good and could be helpful but we are all still subject the the "0'th" law of Thermodynamics: Energy cannot be created or destroyed, and overweight is the result of one thing only: More energy in than out. Mobilizing fat happens when we fast anyway and that is the best way of losing fat. However, if an protein can help mobilize fats quicker, of course it should help in the process..
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisdr Andr� Kruger, Hoogland Health Hydro, South Africa
Brown vs White fat? How about brown vs. white food and you don't have to worry about being fat in the first place. By that I mean eating whole grains instead of white, processed foods. Seems like common sense should tell you not to inject anything in your belly. Instead, eat good fats like raw walnuts, olives, and avocadoes. I disagree with the last comment about this being good and helpful. This is idiotic and yet another example of giving Americans a complex, dangerous solution to the obesity epidemic when there is a simple solution..eat less unhealthy, fake food, and eat healthy, real food instead...and move more.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI strongly agree with http://blog.thelistbykamigray.com/
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis just seems a little risky for now. I would rather wait until it's past the trial & error stage before I take a risk like that! Give it 10 years or so and we'll see ;) http://www.squidoo.com/fast-weight-loss-secret
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisKeeping it simple is definitely a good guideline. I advise my patients NOT to buy from supermarkets but use the "old fashioned" greengrocer instead. The principle is that EVERY process food is subjected to, adds to its load of unncesaary chemicals (toxicity), reduces its nutrient quality and increases its price. How it is possible for the pharmaceutical industry to exploit this simple truth to convince people to buy "supplements" which are even MORE processed is testament to their marketing prowess.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe best way to keep in shape without exhausting your body by running on the treadmill for hours or lifting the heavy barbells at the gym is that having your meal without dreaking watery stuff. It might sound absurd but it really works. Simply put, everyday we are hampering our inherent ability of complete combustion of intakes by drinking water, milk, sodas and so on. With the complete combustion, we won't have the room for the leftovers that are usually stayed in our body as the extra fats. By practising this, we will be able to excrete all the intakes within hours.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThen you might wonder when we should drink? Good question! After two hours after you had a meal and until two hours before you have the next meal, you are welcome to drink as much as you can. It should not be necessarily water. It could be coffee or sodas. For example, when you had a meal at 8, then you are supposed to eat lunch at 1, then between 10 to 11, you can drink as much as you can. It goes to the dinner as well. And if you have dinner at 7, then you can drink from 9 till 10. Why 10? Long story short, that's the time that our body goes into the furnace mode to burn all the previous intakes.
And never, never, never drink before having breakfast. That means you are going to put that furnace out on purpose, and that can cause lots of problems.
Pls, try this for a week. I am not asking you to buy some stupid pills or to get the shot, but simply asking you to stay away from watery stuff during the meal. Within days, you WILL experience the amzing changes in yourself. : ) ~~~
Good luck!
There's a lot of thruth in this advice, I have been giving it for decades.. but one needs only avoid fluids for about 30 minutes before eating. The rationale is that the stomach typically process fluids in about 30 minutes but needs at least 2 hours to process solids. Diluting the stomach acids does lead to fermentation and incomplete digestion. Some of the nutrients absorbed after incomplete digestion cannot be effectively utilized (metabolized) further by the body thus gives no or little energy and add to "passive" body weight.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBUT.. there's no getting past the Zero'th law of Thermodynamics: We cannot create or destroy energy. Your weight is the sum total of energy in and energy out (about 17 kilojoules per gram for protein or carbohydrate, 35 for fats). Many diets and habits can change how much goes in and how much goes out but to lose weight you have to put less in (eat) than out (basal metabolism + exercise). All other advice, diets, pills or philosophies, IF they work, only work because it affects one or both of these.
I'm simply not going to exercise, because I hate it. There is no ethical argument to force me to run laps instead of taking a pill just so others can feel better about yourself that I did it "naturally". The "pill" is the healthier option when you compare it against the "nothing" that people are apparently willing to do when the options are simply exercise and not exercise. Fat is just evolution working as intended, we are advancing faster than biology can adapt to, and now we must use science to shape biology. No one has the right/ability to prevent someone from modifying themselves into whatever form they wish once the procedure is available. They will just go to some country that allows it, and then come back home.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think one of the things everybodys is missing here is that they're not trying to somehow circumnavigate the 0'th law. If there is an increase in brown fat cell activity the body sheds that extra energy at HEAT (a form of energy.)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs I am sure everybody is aware that no two people are the same (leaving aside twins.) Some people naturally have more of the brown fat than others (the color is caused by a concentration of mitochondria, which we learned in intro Biology, are the powerhouses of cells.) The brown fat cells metabolize glycogen and "fat" faster and produce the extra heat which the body can shed. The cells are most common in infants and small animals, which have a higher surface-area-to-volume ratio, as a method of temperature regulation.
Some studies are finding that obese people have less brown fat tha people who are thinner (back to that whole everybody is different) which means they really do have lower (sometimes drastically so) metabolisms. A person with a low amount of brown fat could eat/drink and have the same activity level as a person with high levels of brown fat and gain weight while the person with the higher levels looses weight.
It will be interesting to see where this research leads.
This is only encourage people to eat more and more(knowing that there's a cure). Science should encourage people not to get fat in the first place, seriously. In one way the more advance the science gets the more dangerous and more likely the wipe-out of human would happen by human creation. Don't get me wrong, there are genetic diseases which should get a lot more attention then this in science and modern medicine.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is also the reason that tribes which are isolated from this have better chance of evolving natural body defense, not like modern countries, taking pills for life or going through dangerous producers which will have unknown(bad) consequences in future which will only end as:1)total control to the medical industries, 2)wipe-out of large population of humans.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe answer to fat loss is probably going to be a combination of things from neurochemistry(drugs) to probably thermogenics(more drugs) and yet diet(nutrition).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI would like to lose weight by injection is unhealthy, not long-term approach, drug plus exercise may be a good choice, said here recently, good friends, and have time to go and see
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