His team is also "looking at caffeine supplements to test whether the effect is similar," Symonds said. "The results were positive," he said, so the next step is to figure out which component of coffee - perhaps the caffeine - is activating brown fat. "We were able to image someone straight after they had a drink to see if the brown fat got hotter," said Symonds. The next step was to use high-tech imaging to track changes in brown fat stored in people's necks. To find out, the British team used stem cell-based studies to first see if caffeine might do the trick. So, "increasing its activity improves blood sugar control as well as improving blood lipid levels, and the extra calories burnt help with weight loss."īut can brown fat be stimulated into calorie-burning activity by something you eat or drink? "Brown fat works in a different way to other fat in your body and produces heat by burning sugar and fat, often in response to cold," Symonds explained.
It's distinct from white fat cells, which is where the body stores excess calories. She directs the bariatrics program at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City.Īs Symonds' team explained, thermogenic brown fat was long thought to only exist in either human babies or hibernating animals, such as bears.īut in recent years it's been discovered in adult people. "Usually thermogenic properties are too minimal and insignificant" to help someone go from overweight to normal weight, explained registered dietitian Sharon Zarabi. obesity and nutrition expert said it's just too early to label coffee a dieter's best friend. "The potential implications of our results are pretty big, as obesity is a major health concern for society and we also have a growing diabetes epidemic and brown fat could potentially be part of the solution in tackling them," he said in a university news release.īut one U.S. "This is the first study in humans to show that something like a cup of coffee can have a direct effect on our brown fat functions," said study leader Michael Symonds, of the University of Nottingham. That's the suggestion from a British study that finds coffee stimulates the human body's "brown fat," a heat-generating form of fat that literally burns calories in a process called thermogenesis. MONDAY, J(HealthDay News) - Could America's favorite morning drink also help fight one of its biggest health issues, obesity?
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