Chris Shugart
The Leanness & Longevity Switch
If we could turn some of our white fat into brown fat, we'd get leaner, perform better, and probably live longer.
Here we go again. The mainstream media and the "health at any size" advocates are excited about a new study on body fat. The headlines sound like this:
- "Body Fat Holds Key to Living Longer, Healthier Lives!"
- "Fat Isn't Unhealthy After All!"
- "Body Fat Boosts Exercise Performance and Longevity!"
Hopefully, the readers of these hysterical headlines dug a little deeper into the story. The big switcharoo? The study that got them so excited was about brown fat – BAT or brown adipose tissue – not that white fat spilling over people's waistbands.
The Study
Quick refresher: Brown fat doesn't store energy (calories) like white fat. Instead, it burns calories to generate heat (thermogenesis), which helps regulate body temperature and metabolism.
Brown fat is brown because it contains a lot of iron-rich mitochondrial power plants. There's even something called "beige fat" which is white fat that acts more like brown. Research tells us that brown fat activation improves insulin sensitivity, reduces obesity risk, enhances exercise performance, protects against cardiovascular diseases, and promotes healthier aging.
In the new study from Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, researchers found that mice who got transplants of modified brown fat showed dramatic improvements in exercise capacity within three days, compared to the eight weeks typically needed with normal brown fat transplants. The enhanced brown fat promoted new blood vessel growth in muscles, improved circulation, and quickly influenced whole-body metabolism. The researchers hope that one day we can develop pharmaceutical analogs of brown fat to combat various age-related conditions.
So, all pretty cool, but not exactly "being fat makes you live longer!" as the mainstream headlines implied.
How to Increase Brown Fat Now
A couple of studies show that we may be able to "brown" a little of our white fat, or at least make it beige, by freezing our butts off for several hours a day sitting in cold water or a cold room. But that's a bit impractical.
You can, of course, rev up your brown fat activity by exercising. High-intensity interval training (HIIT) seems to work best. Consuming olive oil may help too, at least according to rat studies. Olive oil contains something called "oleuropein" which increases UCP1 levels. That's an uncoupling protein that causes mitochondria to burn more energy and dissipate more heat.
Supplementally, cyanadin 3-glucoside (Buy at Amazon) (C3G), turns white fat cells brown: ordinary fat-storing white cells convert into energy-expending brown cells. A paper published in the Journal of Biochemistry concluded that C3G increased the mitochondrial content of white fat and encouraged baby fat cells to turn brown.
Add this significant bonus benefit to C3G's other effects – shrinking fat cells, limiting fat storage, and enhancing glucose uptake in muscle fibers instead of storing it as fat – and C3G becomes a potent body-fat fighter with performance and longevity benefits.
C3G is sold as Indigo-3G Nutrient Partitioning Agent (Buy at Amazon).
Reference
- Vatner, Dorothy E., et al. "Brown Adipose Tissue Enhances Exercise Performance and Healthful Longevity." Aging, vol. 16, no. 1, 2024, doi:10.18632/aging.206179.
