In a major breakthrough, scientists have identified a rather elusive protein involved in the production of ‘good’ fat, brown fat, and found it can even boost the formation of these cells in white fat. Understanding how to ‘switch on’ the creation of this type of energy-burning cell opens the door to novel weight-loss treatments that have eluded researchers to date.
Brown adipose tissue (BAT) is essential for producing heat from blood sugar and fat molecules, through a process called thermogenesis. It also requires a lot of energy (or calories) to fuel this. Unfortunately, by the time we reach adulthood, most of our brown fat cells have given way to white adipose tissue (WAT), which has a less efficient energy-burning system, and tends to act more as storage space for the excess calories we eat.
Elite athletes can have as little as 3% WAT throughout their body, while adults with obesity can have as much as 70% – and as such, it becomes increasingly difficult to lose weight.
But researchers at the University Hospital Bonn in Germany believe they have cracked the code that could help adults swing the pendulum back to packing more good fat, and creating ‘beige fat’, or turning the white stuff brown.
"Exercise and dieting are not enough to effectively and permanently shed the pounds," says corresponding author Alexander Pfeifer, professor and Director of the Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University Hospital Bonn. "Our energy-dense foods lead to energy being stored in white fat. But losing weight isn’t that easy, as the body saves energy in response to a low-calorie diet. So our goal is to achieve additional energy release."
Along with researchers from the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Helmholtz Munich and the University of Toulouse-Paul Sabatier, the Bonn team looked at the cAMP signaling pathway in fat metabolism.
“We therefore asked how brown fat mass can be increased while simultaneously reducing bad white fat," said Bonn postdoctoral researcher Laia Reverte-Salisa, also first author of the study.
In a mouse model, the team discovered that a fairly unknown protein called EPAC1 – or exchange proteins directly activated by cAMP – was key to the growth of brown fat cells. This pathway and protein are also found in human fat cells, and using an organoid model to represent human brown fat, the researchers confirmed that EPAC1’s function was the same.
"Our study shows that EPAC1 is an attractive target to increase brown fat mass and thus also energy expenditure," said Pfeifer.
What’s more, they found that an EPAC1 gene variant interrupted the protein’s function and was linked to increased body mass index (BMI). The scientists believe that by harnessing the brown-fat-cell-stimulating power of EPAC1, there’s a clear path forward in the development of novel therapeutics that make losing weight and keeping it off much easier.
The research was published in the journal Nature Cell Biology.
Source: University Hospital Bonn
Moving your body requires calories, from your food or your stored fat. One or the other. You can't run and keep a body moving on just air and water. The trick is in the mind and getting people off of "food addictions" where we eat just because it feels good, even if it's slowly killing us. The other factor is helping people learn to enjoy the taste of healthy foods. When you go off sugar and excess salt the first time, everything tastes bland, but give it a bit of time and you'll start to notice all the OTHER flavors in your food, and when you can learn to enjoy the taste of broccoli or oatmeal or simple beans and spices, you can learn to eat healthy. Practice fasting 2 meals a day until you can go several days. It's hard at first, definitely, but when you make your body tap into the white fat and kick that machinery into gear, it learns to do it quicker and easier in the future.
I would be SUPER hesitant to mess with body hormones and enzymes. There are always equally bad unintended side effects to whatever benefit you're trying to achieve. But learn to control your appetite, and you've got a life skill that'll keep you healthy and happy for decades.
No offence but in regards to your statement: “helping people learn to enjoy the taste of healthy foods.”
“Healthy foods”, meaning ones that aren’t high in calories, will never be enjoyable. Our instincts are strictly honed to find high energy foods EXCLUSIVELY to be enjoyable. Why do you think people cover salads with unhealthy dressings and high fat toppings? It’s because “healthy foods” taste like trash that we eat when we are starving and no high energy food is available. You can’t “teach” people any differently. You can use torture or something to make eating high energy foods repelling but that would cause PTSD and won’t be a popular treatment regime.
I’ve lost 120 lbs. Almost everything remotely enjoyable I’ve eaten in the last few years has been paid for by eating vast amounts of high fibre and healthy garbage before and after it and walking until I’ve developed foot problems and I can tell you that healthy food will never be “enjoyable”.