Special fat cells known as brown adipocytes help maintaining body temperature by converting calory-rich nutrients into heat. This protects from gaining excess weight and metabolic disorders. An international team of researchers led by Professor Alexander Bartelt from the Institute for Cardiovascular Prevention (IPEK) has deciphered a new mechanism that increases respiration and metabolic activity of brown fat cells.
The researchers hope that this discovery will lead to novel approaches utilizing brown fat against metabolic diseases. Their results were recently published in The EMBO Journal . Brown adipocytes attack fat stores The activation of fat-burning cells makes people lose weight.
When it is cold, brown adipocytes extract their fuel from storage fat, as thermogenesis requires a lot of calories. People who train their brown fat through regular cold exposure are thinner and less prone to developing diabetes and cardiovascular diseases." Professor Alexander Bartelt, Institute for Cardiovascular Prevention (IPEK) Brown fat cells are particularly rich in mitochondria, the power plants where cellular respiration takes place.
However, science does not yet sufficiently understand how brown fat cells boost metabolism such that new therapies could be developed. Cold stimulates thermogenesis The molecular trick of brown fat cells is uncoupling protein-1, which facilitates that heat is generated instead of ATP, the conventional product of cellular respiration. "The high metabolic a.