By Deborah Cornwall
Researchers have found exposure to cooler temperatures regrows baby fat, boosting a person’s metabolism and helping to tackle diabetes.
While losing your baby fat is often aspired to, scientists say regaining it could be the key to losing weight.
Researchers in Australia and the US have found baby fat, also known as brown fat, burns energy at a much faster rate than ordinary white fat.
They found by being exposed to cooler temperatures – around 19 degrees – humans can regrow their baby fat, therefore boosting their metabolism.
In findings published today in the medical peer review journal Diabetes, researchers say exposing human subjects to cooler temperatures for just four weeks caused significant growth in their brown fat.
Head researcher, Australian endocrinologist Dr Paul Lee, says the findings could prove critical in fighting obesity.
“Ordinary white fat stores energy but when we have too much of it, it can cause diabetes, high blood pressure and a range of metabolic disorders,” Dr Lee said.
“In contrast, brown fat cells, I kind of see them as generators or powerhouses.
“Instead of storing energy brown fat cells actually burn energy and because of that, animals with lots of brown fat are actually protected from diabetes, obesity, and a full range of metabolic disorders.”
Subjects boosted baby fat 40 per cent in just four weeks
Dr Lee, a clinical research fellow from Sydney’s Garvan Institute recruited five healthy men to spend every night for four months in a temperature controlled lab set at 19 degrees celsius.
During this time their brown fat cells grew a staggering 40 per cent and their metabolism increased.
But when they were kept in a 27 degree room their brown fat cells and metabolism decreased.
“I think the exciting thing with brown fat is it’s in a territory that we have not explored before and it opens new directions,” Dr Lee said.
“Obesity is a global health issue, and most strategies in counteracting obesity involve reducing food intake or increasing exercise which can be difficult to sustain and ineffective in the long-run.”
But Dr Lee warns turning down the thermostat is not a guaranteed way of shedding those unwanted pounds.
“I’m afraid it may not be that simple because just like exercise, cold exposure requires training,” he said.
“If you put someone in quite short-term cold exposure without acclimatising them to the cold environment, the body actually has to work harder and may potentially stimulate appetite to compensate for that cold stress.
“The key is we did show a benefit, but to translate that into real life practical practice, that requires a lot more work.”
He says research shows humans have gone a bit soft when it comes to braving the cold, with the average temperature in the home climbing 3 degrees.
“Data collected in the UK and the US tracking bedroom and dining room temperature in the last 20 to 30 years (found) the temperature had gradually climbed up to 22 degrees because of widespread central heating,” Dr Lee said.
So what’s Dr Lee’s advice for how the rest of us take advantage of these findings?
“If you walk out on a cool day, maybe instead of wrapping yourself in a scarf and stuff, maybe (wear) a lighter jacket so that you feel the cool comfortably but not to the extent that you feel that you’re shivering,” he said.
“At the moment we are actually conducting a study looking at the potential effects of medication which may be able to recruit brown fat in humans.”