{"id":882416,"date":"2026-10-14T21:08:13","date_gmt":"2026-10-14T21:08:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/882416\/"},"modified":"2026-10-14T21:08:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-14T21:08:13","slug":"overlooked-brown-fat-in-our-bodies-linked-to-wide-range-of-health-benefits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/882416\/","title":{"rendered":"Overlooked brown fat in our bodies linked to wide range of health benefits"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Light<\/p>\n

Brown fat (shown here in a light-microscopy image) burns calories to generate heat.Credit: Ziad M. El-Zaatari\/Science Photo Library<\/p>\n

When people think of fat, they typically picture the jiggly tissue around the belly that stores extra calories. That\u2019s white fat<\/a>. But there\u2019s another type, called brown fat<\/a>, that does the opposite. Typically found around the neck, armpits and in the chest, brown fat burns calories to generate heat and has been linked to health benefits.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Fat cells have a \u2018memory\u2019 of obesity \u2014 hinting at why it\u2019s hard to keep weight off<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

A study of more than 100,000 people \u2014 the largest of its kind \u2014 is now expanding that list of benefits. It revealed that people with \u2018active\u2019 brown fat are less affected by a number of health issues, including type 2 diabetes, depression and anxiety, than are those without it. Researchers used an artificial-intelligence model to quantify, from scans, the participants\u2019 active brown fat, which is fat that is \u2018turned on\u2019 and burning calories. They concluded that the more active brown fat people have, the greater the protection they have from disorders and diseases.<\/p>\n

The findings were published today in Nature1<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is one of the most comprehensive and, probably, significant works in the field,\u201d says Shingo Kajimura, a molecular biologist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts.<\/p>\n

Because this is a retrospective study, more work is needed to prove that brown fat is indeed causing all these benefits, says Irfan Lodhi, a molecular biologist at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. \u201cBut it\u2019s still a very interesting and surprising study,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Turning up the heat<\/p>\n

Scientists have known for decades that brown fat burns calories to produce heat. The fat helps newborns to stay warm, and scientists thought it vanished after babies developed the ability to shiver. But in 2009, researchers reported brown fat in human adults for the first time2<\/a>,3<\/a>,4<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Why BMI is flawed \u2014 and how to redefine obesity<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

To map active brown fat in people, scientists use imaging techniques that highlight metabolically active tissue. They inject people with a type of radioactive glucose, and use a combination of positron emission tomography (PET) and computed tomography (CT) scans to reveal which tissues are taking up the glucose \u2014 highlighting where brown fat is activated.<\/p>\n

These techniques are typically also used to diagnose and monitor cancer. So, a team led by Paul Cohen, a physician-scientist at The Rockefeller University in New York City, partnered with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, also in New York, to obtain data from more than 100,000 people who had these scans while going through treatment there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brown fat (shown here in a light-microscopy image) burns calories to generate heat.Credit: Ziad M. El-Zaatari\/Science Photo Library…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":882417,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[19944,8006,97,1159,3625,1160,79],"class_list":["post-882416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-computer-science","tag-diseases","tag-health","tag-humanities-and-social-sciences","tag-metabolism","tag-multidisciplinary","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=882416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882416\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/882417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=882416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=882416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=882416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}