Good Life Project - A Fat That Makes You Thin [New Research].

Episode Date: January 4, 2018

As we head into this new year, full of hope and resolutions, the most popular goal is to lose weight and get fit. Optimizing your health and getting fit is a key element of filling your Vitality Bucket. And, it often includes eating better, moving your body and, wait for it, shedding fat.But, here's the thing. Over the last decade, research has revealed that all fat is not created equal. What fat cells, while serving certain necessary roles, are the ones we tend to fear. The ones that make up nearly all the fat in our body, store energy, make us larger, and often lead to inflammation and contribute to an array of metabolic disease.Brown fat, though, does the exact opposite. It is like a caloric furnace, helps us get lean, better control glucose sensitivity and more. As babies, we have a ton of it. But, by the time we become grown-ups, there is very little left.What if there was a way to increase the brown fat in your body as a way to turn up the furnace, lose weight and get healthier? What if you could actually turn your white fat brown? Turns out, you can! That's was we're talking about in today's Good Life Update, which is a rare expanded Good Life Science deep-dive. And, as always, for those who want to go to the source, here's a link to the full study we mentioned as the "leading edge" in this research.-------------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What if you actually had a type of fat cell in your body that made you skinnier? I know, sounds like a dream, right? Turns out that in fact, all fat is not equal. That we have different types of fat cells at a post-stition in our body. And one particular type stores energy, plumping us up. The other type actually burns energy pretty fiercely, making us leaner and also regulating things like glucose in our body and all sorts of other things that would be super beneficial, which is really important considering this time of year, a lot of

people are making resolutions and the single biggest one that people make over and over and over the same one every year and fail, is to lose weight. We're going to explore these two different types of fat cells and three interesting approaches to getting more of the good and less of the bad in today's Good Life Update. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever,

making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary.

Ah, fat. It is that thing that we love to hate, hate to love. We love the taste of fatty stuff in our foods, but we don't love the way that fat within our body makes us feel. We don't love the inflammation that very often is associated with a very high level of fat within our body, within our cells, and all sorts of other risk and disease

and cosmetic things that go along with it. But here's the thing about fat. All fat, it turns out, is not created equal. I've been kind of fascinated by this for many years now when I first started following some of the research on fat in our body. And it turns out that there's a type of fat that exists in our body when we are bambinos, when we're first born, that is incredibly beneficial. And for almost everybody, it tends to pretty much go away, except for trace amounts when we get older, which is a bit of a shame because there's tremendous benefit in having this type of fat in our body. So when we're born, we have a lot of these things called brown fat cells in our body, which is pretty distinct from the white fat cells that

fill our body as we get older. Then what's the big difference here and why would we care? And why might we actually want a whole bunch more brown fat in our body? Well, here's the deal. When we are in the womb, we're kind of surrounded by an environment that is somewhere around 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, super warm. I mean, imagine stepping out, imagine living in a part of the world where the average temperature is 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, which, what is that, Celsius for those of our non-US listeners? I think that's probably somewhere around 30 degrees. That's a pretty warm environment. It's pretty toasty. So imagine spending every waking hour in that environment. And then all of a sudden, as a baby becomes a baby, it arrives in this environment that very often the temperature drops dramatically and it has to survive. It has to learn how to regulate its body temperature and generate a ton of its own heat to allow it to be okay in a colder outside environment. Part of the way that happens

is a baby has a very high level of these things called brown fat cells. Now, here's the interesting thing about brown fat and why it's radically different than the white fat that surrounds and infiltrates all sorts of the nooks and crannies in our bodies as we're older. Brown fat actually is brown because it is loaded up with these little things called mitochondria. Now, you may remember this from being a kid in biology class, and you may have remembered being told mitochondria are the power plant of the cell. And in fact, they are. Mitochondria are the things that allow for the creation of energy. And they actually, they gobble up energy within our body and then they produce, they gobble up, you know,

like sort of certain substrates and then they produce energy and heat, making them what's known as thermogenic, meaning they produce energy and heat. That heat helps warm our body and the energy helps run our body. And these mitochondria help consume the food, the fuel that we put into our body. The more mitochondria we have, the more, quote, metabolically active our body is and more

metabolically active our cells are. The more calories we burn, the leaner we become. And we get to regulate our body temperature more effectively. So if you had a very high level of mitochondria in your cells, you'd burn more calories, be leaner, and very likely be more comfortable in cooler environments. And that's kind of an interesting thing because it has tons of benefits. So we have a lot of internal environments that are heated, the brown fat cells in our body go away. We get fewer and fewer and fewer. And over time, they pretty much don't exist. And it was always thought that by the time you reach adulthood, there is no more brown fat in your body. You only have white fat. White fat has a much lower volume of mitochondria, is much less effective at taking in energy substrates

and turning it into heat and energy and burning them. And in fact, is known as the storage plant for energy. And as it stores more, guess what happens? It gets bigger. Those white fat cells start to go all over our body and they multiply and they get bigger. And that fat cells start to go all over our body, and they multiply, and they get bigger. And that gives us the appearance and experience of being fat. Now, a little something started to go on.

Not too long ago, researchers started to stumble upon the fact that some people actually, even later in life, have a small percentage of brown fat cells still in their body. One of the ways they discovered this, by the way, is that oncologists who were scanning, running scans to see where cancer cells were in the body, which are more metabolically active than other cells, noticed that the scans were lighting up in other areas that were not, in fact, cancer cells. And what they saw was that in certain areas, there were small gatherings of these other cells that seemed to be very metabolically active, and they were, in fact, brown fat cells. And then what some of them noticed is that over time, the readings seem to show more of these in the winter than in the summer. And that started people thinking, huh, so maybe these brown fat cells don't entirely go away as we age. And then some folks started to

wonder, I wonder if these are growable. So if they're still in our body, is there some way to either grow more of them or is there some way to convert white fat cells, which normally spend most of their life storing and plumping into brown fat cells, which spend most of their life burning and leaning? Because if you could either grow more or figure out how to convert white to brown, that might be one of the most powerful tools that we could have in the fight against overweightness and obesity and all of the disease and high states of inflammation that are associated with that in the world today. So researchers started diving into this, and they started to figure out a couple of different interventions that made a real difference. Among the first was exposure to cold. So remember I shared how researchers noticed on the scans early on that there was a slightly higher sort of hot zone of brown fat and metabolic activity in the winter

months. So they started to run experiments and say, huh, I wonder if exposure to cold would actually change the amount of brown fat in the body. Could we either grow more brown fat cells or would cold in some way in the body create neurological, chemical, electrical reactions that might in some way, quote, brown white blood cells? So they began to run experiments where they would take subjects and put them in cold environments. And they would measure the volume of brown and white fat cells, and they would measure the metabolic activity within these people to see how many calories

they were burning over a window of time. Some of the experiments were not super fun. For example, taking folks and putting them in sort of a surround suits that dial the temperature down to the mid 60s in Fahrenheit, which is about cold enough to make you feel a bit uncomfortable, but not cold enough to make you shiver. And there's a reason for that, by the way. And the reason is this, because in the research, people wanted to figure out, okay, is there some internal reaction that might be happening within the fat cells

that would cause a change in metabolic expenditure or calorie burn rather than the shivering effect, which would be actual muscle contractions, which would be burning calories. So they wanted to make the subjects cool enough to be a bit uncomfortable and activate those brown cells, potentially brown some white cells or grow more of them, but not so cold that they were shivering. And what they found was, in fact, it made a real difference. So that then led to follow-on experiments where participants were then put in rooms where it was about 63 degrees.

Some of this research was done actually by researchers in Japan for two hours a day for six weeks. And they wanted to see what was happening metabolically. And in the beginning, participants burned about 108 calories, more than they would normally burn. But over a period of about a month and a half, their bodies started adapting and burning even more, closer to 300 calories.

Now, that may not seem like a whole lot, but 300 calories sustained over a period of days, weeks, months, and years is a massive amount of extra caloric expenditure. If you figure a calorie or one pound worth of energy is about 3,500 calories, then after about a dozen, about two weeks or so, that would be the equivalent of burning one more pound of fat or body weight over a year. That is huge, especially considering that once people reach their mid-years, they very often put on about 10 pounds a decade or about a pound a year. So this is huge news.

And what they found in scanning the people in these studies was that the activity in the fat cells was largely in control of this. What they started to find was that some white cells were what they called beiging. So they weren't becoming entirely brown where they were just massively loaded with mitochondria, but they were becoming beige where they had a much higher volume of mitochondria. So one of the ways that they started to learn to begin the browning of the fat in our body is exposure to lower temperatures, exposure to cold. There have been all sorts of gadgets and doodads and things like that that have hit the market in the years since that are designed to essentially expose you to cold. But in fact, if you look at people who live in colder parts of the world, you will also see very often higher metabolic rates and higher volumes of brown fat in their body. Here's the thing though, not a lot of people, you know, it's like a good news, bad news scenario. Good news,

exposure to cold on a daily basis will help the browning of your fat cells in your body, increase the calories that you burn, and reduce potentially not just the fat in your body and the inflammation, but exposure to all sorts of metabolic disease. But not a lot of people actually want to expose themselves to cold for hours on a daily basis. So it is not exactly the spoonful of sugar that folks want to hear. So researchers kept looking though, and they're thinking to themselves, what can I do to continue to actually see if we can brown cells in our body different ways? And over the last

small number of years, there are two other things that have come out. And those are exercise and some pretty cool new interventions. So we're going to dive into those in just a minute. The Apple Watch Series X is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X.

Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun.

On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight Risk.

And we're back with our expanded science-based riff today where we're checking out all the different things about the browning of the fat in our body, about good fat. Is there actually good fat? We were talking about exposure to cold as a way to increase the activity of brown fat and potentially increase the number of brown fat cells in your body and turn white fat into beige and possibly even brown fat. Yes, it can be changed. Turns out that exercise is a second

potential intervention that can have the effect of browning your fat cells. So some more recent research started to look at what happens in exercise in the body. And we know that people who exercise regularly, well, exercise increases the demand for energy in your body, and it makes us burn all the food that we put into our body, right? Because if we exercise, we need more energy to create more energy. Those little mitochondria have to produce it and to produce it, they need fuel.

And that fuel is the stuff that we eat. So we've always kind of thought that the reason that exercise burns calories and makes us leaner is because of that cycle. Turns out there may be something else going on. There is a different reaction that happens. And it turns out that actually exercise may have the effect of browning or beiging or browning white fat cells, increasing the volume of mitochondria in those cells, and actually turning them into brown cells

that are something like five times more metabolically active, meaning they burn like five times more calories and store a lot less. And this was discovered in recent research through a chemical in our body called irisin, which is released after exercise and has the potential effect to brown fat cells in your body. So we now have this alternative pathway. And there's one other thing that gets released in the body that's getting a lot of attention now, too, called

BDNF. And for long-time listeners, you've heard me talk about this in past science riffs, brain-derived neurotropic factor, which is why we say BDNF for short, is something that is produced during and after exercise, and it promotes the growth of brain cells, of neurons in the brain. So it's incredibly important in both stopping the shrinking of the brain with age and also potentially promoting growth of new brain cells and even growing your brain larger. What we're seeing now is BDNF may also be involved in somehow helping to trigger the browning of fat cells in your body. So this is really interesting too. So now we know that it's not just about exposure to cold. It's also very likely about exercise. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum.

Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday, we've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. The more we exercise, the more likely we are to produce the chemistry in our body that will lead to an increase in the browning of fat cells in our body. And the more we do that, the more these cells become metabolically active.

And even when we're not exercising, they're burning up more of the fat and the other stuff that's in our body and at the same time helping regulate glucose and all the other stuff, which is a really cool, fascinating thing. And as we come full circle with today's riff, I want to kind of touch down on the latest bit of science that I've become aware of. And that is kind of fascinating new study. This is research that was done at Nanyang Technological University and recently reported in Small Methods. And we will, as always, give you a link to the detailed study report for that. And this was kind of fascinating because it represents potentially the future of our ability to brown fat cells in our

body. What researchers did was they essentially, they used what's called a microneedle patch and they put certain substances into this patch. So microneedle patch is a little patch filled with tons of tiny little, almost microscopic little dissolvable needles with the substances in them. They put the patch on the skin for a couple of minutes and then they pull it off.

And then these needles dissolve through the skin and they dissolve essentially right into subcutaneous fat cells. So they essentially bypass having to take much larger amounts of the chemicals, the substances that may not be handled by a system on a much larger basis, and they can create a vastly smaller dose, have it delivered through these microneedle patches on the skin directly, almost directly into fat cells and help turn white fat into brown fat. And what this research showed was that when they

actually did this, everything worked. That the subcutaneous fat actually ended up going from white to brown. And it's really exciting on the one hand because this is something, one of the biggest challenges with the two interventions I was just talking about before, exposure to cold and exercise, is compliance. They require us to commit to doing things on a daily basis for sustained amounts of times that many people experience as being unpleasant or not having time for. Now, we can address both of those things, and we probably will in a different riff, but that has been one of the biggest problems in having anybody commit to any form of exercise program

and certainly having people experience the relative unpleasantness of being in colder environments for hours a day. So when you talk about things like microneedle patches, being able to deliver substances that have the same effect and create a much higher metabolic rate, can literally turn white fat into brown fat, it's really fascinating when you think about what the future of things like this may be, especially in the context of what's been happening in our society. With everybody sort of trending to higher and higher weights and much higher percentage of the body composition being made up of white fat cells, the risk of type 2 diabetes, of stroke,

of heart disease, of glucose dysregulation in the body, interventions like this are really interesting. Now, the two chemicals that were used in the microneedle patch in this particular case were something called beta-3 adrenergic receptor agonist and also T3, which is actually a thyroid medication that some folks will take for thyroid dysregulation. When they're taken orally or at higher doses systemically, these things can have some major side effects. But in microdoses through the micropatches, it's really kind of fascinating what can happen.

Do not experiment with this or any things like this at home. Not that anyone would have access to this kind of technology anyway. But the interesting thing to me about this is it's the next evolution, both in terms of microneedles as a delivery system, but also if we could, in fact, have something that where compliance was effectively taken out of the equation as a major barrier to being able to convert white fat cells into brown fat cells and thereby have those brown fat cells stick around and then create all of the myriad benefits in the body that they tend to create, this could be really fascinating. So something to sort of explore as we think about the way that we

work with our bodies. And I think it's a really fascinating micro history of the sort of the discovery and the renewed focus over the last decade or so of fat in the body. The fact that there is not just one type of fat cell of the distinct differences between Brown and white fat cells and of what we might start to focus on in our own bodies as we think about our bigger goals. So as we come full circle, right, and we've been talking a lot about resolutions. And as I mentioned, starting off this episode, the single biggest New Year's resolution that is made is to

lose weight and get fit. Very often that exact same resolution was made by the exact same person the year before and the year before and the year before. And the failure rate at this, we all know sort of societally is somewhere between 90 and 95%. So if there are things that we could do to actually change the nature of the fat that is in our body, to begin to shift away from the type of fat that is incredibly unhealthy and also cosmetically we wouldn't love to have in our body and have it become more metabolically active fat and get all the benefits of that, it would be a really good thing. So that tells us that things like it also gives us another reason to exercise. If we know that exercise is actually one of the things that contributes to the beiging or browning of the fat cells in

our body, and there's a whole secondary benefit for caloric burn and health markers, well, then it gives us another reason to do it. If we know that being in cooler environments also helps with this process, well, maybe we dial down the thermostat in where we live for a little bit. Or maybe we make a point of going out and taking a walk outside in the cold weather. Not dangerously cold, always taking care of yourself, but exposure to cooler environments, both throughout the day and in bursts, can also help with this process. And also it gives us really interesting insight into what may be coming down the pike from a science basis that may be able to accelerate this process of the browning of fat in our body and potentially deliver some really interesting benefits without the sort of compliance challenges that we work with today.

So I hope you found this interesting. As I mentioned, this has been a bit of an unusual expanded. Normally our Thursday updates are a blend of a riff and then a separate science, good life science update. I felt like this was kind of like one big blended thing where I wanted to weave a whole bunch of science around one particular topic that tied into the single biggest goal that so many of us have as we enter the year and maybe plant some seeds about playing a little bit more in the cold. Another reason to exercise and thinking about the exciting things in science that are coming our way around body composition. As always,

wishing you an incredible day ahead, week ahead, year ahead. I thank you so much for tuning in, for listening. And I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project. Hey, thanks so much for listening. And thanks also to our fantastic sponsors who help make this show possible. You can check them out in the links we've included in today's show notes. And while you're at it, be sure to click on the subscribe button in your listening app

so you never miss an episode and then share the Good Life Project love with friends. Because when ideas become conversations that lead to action, that's when real change takes hold. See you next time. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping.

And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday.

We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is you're gonna die don't shoot if we need them y'all need a pilot flight risk