New evidence from UK researchers suggests that drinking Coffee may be a simple and effective way to stimulate your body to burn excess calories, thus fighting obesity. The key to this finding is the discovery of a potential way to stimulate Calorie-burning brown Fat…
The discovery that drinking Coffee can stimulate Calorie-burning brown
fat may have huge positive implications for the whole world.
And that’s great news for everybody, everywhere!
Brown adipose tissue (BAF), commonly known as brown fat, is a type of fat found in mammals, mostly in hibernating species an human infants. For a few years, now, we’ve known that human adults also have BAF. Of interest to researchers is that BAF’s main function seems to be to burn excess Calories producing energy, which is released as heat. The other, more common type of adipose tissue, white fat, is a result of the body’s natural tendency to store excess Calories. We also know that the body can burn both fat and sugar to produce heat.
Researchers at Nottingham University wanted to see if they could stimulate BAF in humans to help reduce weight and fight obesity.
What they did
In a series of very-early stage-experiments, researchers tested petri dish samples of brown fat to see if a simple dietary stimulant, caffeine, would stimulate BAF cells. Those tests were successful.
Next, they moved on to humans, using regular Coffee by the cup and special thermal sensors to detect the heat produced in the BAF as proof that the BAF was being stimulated.
What they found
“From our previous work, we knew that brown fat is mainly located in the neck region, so we were able to image someone straight after they had a drink [of Coffee] to see if the brown fat got hotter,” said study spokesperson Dr. Michael Symonds. “The results were positive and we now need to [confirm that] caffeine as one of the ingredients in the coffee is acting as the stimulus or if there’s another component helping with the activation of brown fat.”
The takeaway
“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,” Symonds explains. “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.”
My take
If the Nottingham results are, in fact, accurate, BAF stimulation could play a major role in reducing obesity and, in turn, have a real, positive impact on the obesity epidemic that is currently costing the world’s health care systems hundreds of billions of dollars a year – not to mention contributing to millions of early deaths every year from heart disease, stroke, diabetes and cancer.
Imagine what we could achieve, as a society, if we could redirect even some of the money we now use to treat obesity, and the other conditions it precipitates, toward preparing for climate change and the huge associated challenges facing us in changing what we eat, the way we eat and how much we eat. Now, this is not like U.S. President Donald Trump saying he’s going to build a wall, and somebody else is going to pay for it. This is solving one global crisis, and redirecting the money we save to solve another global crisis. Not to mention that the obesity epidemic and the climate change crisis are real – not political constructs like Trump’s border ‘crisis’.
Finally, don’t forget that a number of other university studies over the past year or so have revealed that drinking Coffee can be good for you in a number of other ways. The methods and procedures employed by Symonds and his team – as well as their original goal – may seem simple and straightforward, but the implications of their discoveries may literally turn out to be earth-changing.
~ Maggie J.