Friday, February 17, 2012
I'm still trying to wrap my head around the technical issues of these various research articles, but it SOUNDS like having some "brown fat" in my body would be a good thing for my metabolish (as opposed to the pasty, lardy, not-quite-white-more-like-murky-yellowish-
blobbish fat that resides on most of my visible body outlines, sometimes clad in purple fabric, in which case it's "not quite purple fat").
I also haven't $helled out for the access to various research paper websites, so I just read along best I can on the freebie abstracts....
but check these out...
Cold-Activated Brown Adipose Tissue in Healthy Men
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJ
Moa0808718
(why do they always research the men? they can come research my blubber! I'll even donate a couple dozen vials of buttocks fat!!)
Harrrumpf, this other link was "down due to system maintainance." we'll see if it comes back up.
And from Popular Mechanics:
Brown Fat Revelations May Lead to New Weight Loss Drugs
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/
health/genetics/brown-fat-revelations-
may-lead-to-new-weight-loss-drugs-670440
I like this article - written for the layman's (and laywoman's, and "lay, woman..." ooops...) perspective... and here is a sweet line: "Rather than just a blubbery, lifeless mass, fat is now considered to be a sophisticated and scientifically complex biological organ, as important to the body as the liver or the kidneys."
See there? Fat isn't a blubbery lifeless mass?? who knew! Certainly not me, Mrs. I Hate My Blubbery Butt But Not Enough To Move It Around The Block Often Enough...
So anyway I read one of these or a similar article (am still kicking myself because I meant to copy that one and write up this blog a few days ago when I first read it)... but among other things, apparently cold helps to activate the "brown fat."
Now let me finish reading this article before I go on, because the other day, the article I read said something about wearing cold ice packs around the neck for 30 minutes a day to help activate the brown fat, and I was thinking to myself, now that sounds like a lovely idea last summer when it was only 105-110 degrees on average during the week, but a cold pack in the winter? come on! It's cold already?!
But, I thought, hmmmmm, so how would it be if I went for a walk in the evening and bundled up everything EXCEPT my neck - leave it open to the elements - and see if that doesn't crank up some brown fat? It wasn't terribly cold the other day, so I did that, and my fingers got cold, shoulda wore gloves, but I was surprised that I didn't feel as "cold" as I thought I would, as I usually wrap scarves around my neck to keep my ears warm. Otherwise, I get awful ear aches when I walk in cold weather, and I'm deaf enough already (100 dB in bad ear, 70 dB in good ear) that I don't like aggravating my ears any more than they already are.
Anyway... I would need to test this EVERY DAY, but anyway back to this article - it seems to bringing in more info than what I remember reading the other day, although it is still discussing the same Dutch group that the first article I read talked about (the one I read a few days ago but can't remember what URL it was at.)...
You know how it is, gals, when you go on a weight loss program and the hubster always loses more weight faster then the wives - because they supposedly have more muscle mass? Here's an interesting comment from the Popular Mechanics article: "Cypess's research has shown that, besides young, thin people, women are twice as likely as men to have significant amounts of active brown fat—perhaps because with less muscle mass, they need brown fat to stay warm. In fact, temperature seems to be an important controller of brown fat activity."
WOOT!
Okay so then the article goes on a downward slant, pushing for a "magic pill" basically to just rev up metabolism to burn say, 500 more calories a day...
But! AHA! just what I was thinking out loud about, when I went for my walk a few nights ago...
"Until a pill becomes available, there are ways for people to rev up their brown fat activity. "I don't think you could get a lot of people to put up with [cold] therapy," Enerbäck says, but it could help to turn down your home's central heating and to spend some time outside in the fall and winter. Studies suggest that people who work outdoors have higher brown fat activity than average, so it's not absurd to think that walking to work on a brisk day could boost your metabolism."
Okay so now I need to stop with the excuses already and go for a walk. Or run. Or fast waddle.
The first article, I discovered that "the rest of the discussion" could be clicked on and revealed, so I guess it wasn't as abstracted as I thought.
But it's 11 pm. I'm tired. Gotta busy day.
This is interesting to know... sort of a relief, in a way because I remember telling people years ago that I seemed to lose weight more in previous years when I did walk in the cold weather, but I didn't know why and I didn't know how to explain it, and I was treated like I was crazy.
Who's Crazy Now???
It's not the wrong time for a piece of chocolate cake...unless you just finished eating one...FREQUENCY and PORTION CONTROL are the key...
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