Brown fat increases fat-burning-How to keep it working for you.

windwords7

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This is a good little read! WW7

Brown fat increases fat-burning

By Dr. Phil Maffetone

If you overdress for your workout or take a hot-tub, sauna or even a hot shower directly after exercising, you may be unwittingly reducing your body's ability to burn fat as a fuel.

<P class=text>This is because too much heat decreases the activity of brown fat, a certain type of fat that comprises about 1 percent of your total body fat and regulates the burning of white fat, the other 99 percent of your fat stores.

<P class=text>Stimulate it properly and brown fat can help you burn white fat. However other types of stimulation, such as too much heat, can prompt brown fat to make you store white fat and become sluggish like an animal in hibernation.

<P class=text>Brown fat, which is found mostly in the areas of the shoulders, underarms, ribs, and at the nape of the neck, helps regulate your metabolism's fat-burning mechanism. Cold stimulation increase brown-fat activity and heat diminishes it. Brown-fat activity is also diminished by reduced caloric intake and is stimulated by omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids. Sunlight also can stimulate brown-fat metabolism.

<P class=text>Since brown fat is partly controlled by temperature, overdressing when you exercise or wearing "sweat suits" can reduce fat-burning, as can hot baths, showers or saunas, especially if taken directly after exercising.

<SPAN class=text>However, on the other hand, you can stimulate brown fat to burn more white fat by exposing it to cool water. This can be accomplished by ending your shower or bath with a minute or two of cool or cold water. And if you do use a hot tub or sauna, a cool or cold shower or plunge afterward can be helpful in keeping your brown fat in tune for burning white fat.</SPAN>
 

Sheesh

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Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't brown-fat only active in infants?
 

YellowJacket

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Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't brown-fat only active in infants?
This is correct to an extent. Like the article says, brown fato nly makes up 1% or so of adult human's total fat content. Its main function is to store triglycerides. Brown fat because if the lipid color, sometimes red. As compared to white fat, brown fat is highly vascularized and has unmyelinated axon nerves which provide sympathetic stimulation to the adipocytes (God I love physiology :) )

This is probably why its not that common in humans, from my A&P book:

"In contrast to other cells, including white adipocytes, brown adipocytes express mitochondrial uncoupling protein, which gives the cell's mitochondria an ability to uncouple oxidative phosphorylation and utilize substrates to generate heat rather than ATP. "
 

Sheesh

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This is correct to an extent. Like the article says, brown fato nly makes up 1% or so of adult human's total fat content. Its main function is to store triglycerides. Brown fat because if the lipid color, sometimes red. As compared to white fat, brown fat is highly vascularized and has unmyelinated axon nerves which provide sympathetic stimulation to the adipocytes (God I love physiology :) )

This is probably why its not that common in humans, from my A&P book:

"In contrast to other cells, including white adipocytes, brown adipocytes express mitochondrial uncoupling protein, which gives the cell's mitochondria an ability to uncouple oxidative phosphorylation and utilize substrates to generate heat rather than ATP. "
Ahhhh, thanks for the clarification.

BTW - please take a look at my last reply to the cardio discussion thread, and critique it YJ style...:D
 

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