Current Affairs Of Pakistan & World: You have a fat that burns to keep you warm

You have a fat that burns to keep you warm

Flip the Brown-Fat Switch - Inergize Spire cold plunge

Hey there,

Most of your body fat just sits there storing energy. But you carry a second, rarer kind that does the opposite. It burns fuel to make heat. It is called brown fat, and cold is what wakes it up.

When researchers cooled 24 healthy men to a brisk 16C, 96% of them lit up brown fat that was nearly silent at room temperature. (van Marken Lichtenbelt et al., New England Journal of Medicine, 2009.)

Picture a small furnace tucked around your collarbones and spine. Most of the day it idles. Drop into cold water and your body flips it on, burning calories purely to keep your core warm. The colder edge of comfort is the switch that lights it.

Here is the honest part, kept short. One plunge will not melt anything, and the calorie burn is modest. But over six weeks of regular cold, people actually grew more active brown fat and burned more energy in the cold (Yoneshiro et al., Journal of Clinical Investigation, 2013), so your metabolism has one more tool to reach for.