Browsing: Brown Fat

Brown fat, or brown adipose tissue, is a type of body fat that is activated when you get cold. Brown fat produces heat to help maintain your body temperature in cold conditions. Unlike white fat, which comprises most of the body fat in humans and is primarily a storage for calories, brown fat burns calories to generate heat. It contains more mitochondria than white fat, which are the “engines” within brown fat cells that burn calories to produce heat. Brown fat is especially prevalent in newborns, who have a high surface-area-to-volume ratio and need to generate more heat to maintain their body temperature. In adults, smaller amounts of brown fat are found in regions like the neck and shoulders. Recent research has explored the potential of brown fat in treating obesity and metabolic syndrome, as its calorie-burning properties could be harnessed to help manage weight and improve metabolic health.