THE “GOOD FAT” HIDING IN YOUR NECK: Huge Study of 100,000 People Links Brown Fat to Lower Diabetes and Depression
Most of us think of body fat as something to lose. But there is a second kind of fat that works in the opposite way, and the health benefits of brown fat may be much wider than scientists thought.
A study of more than 100,000 people, published on 14 October in Nature, found that people with active brown fat were less affected by a range of conditions, including type 2 diabetes, depression and anxiety. It is the largest study of its kind, according to Nature’s news report.
White fat vs brown fat
The fat around the belly is white fat. It stores extra calories. Brown fat does something else: it burns calories to produce heat. In adults it is usually found around the neck, in the armpits and in the chest.
Scientists call brown fat “active” when it is switched on and burning energy. That is the kind this study measured.
How the study worked
The researchers used an artificial-intelligence model to measure active brown fat from medical scans. That allowed them to look at a very large group of people, far more than earlier studies could handle.
Their conclusion: the more active brown fat a person had, the greater their protection from a number of disorders and diseases.
The surprise: mental health
Links between brown fat and metabolism were expected, because brown fat burns energy and helps handle blood sugar. The surprise was the connection with better mental health, including lower rates of depression and anxiety.
What this does and does not mean
This kind of study shows an association. It does not prove that brown fat causes the benefits, and people with more active brown fat may differ in other ways. On their own, the findings are not a reason to change your lifestyle in any specific way.
What it does do is put brown fat firmly on the map as a possible marker of health, and as a target for future research, including whether it can be safely activated to protect against disease.
Read more in our Health section.
Featured image: Hole in the ice on Vatioja in Muonio, Finland, 2019 January by Ximonic (Simo Räsänen), CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.