Unlike ‘normal’ fat, ‘brown fat’ which is typically found in small deposits around the shoulders and neck, is something we should cherish. That’s because it is packed with mitochondria that act like mini power stations turning food into energy.
In a study conducted by researchers at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Australia it was found that when a study group were asked to spend four months living in a temperature controlled environment, lowering the temperature resulted in big changes in their levels of brown fat.
The good news is that boosting your brown fat levels means that you burn more calories.
In the study, when the building temperature was dropped to 19c, the group’s brown fat increased by an average of 42 percent and their metabolic rate by more than 10 percent. When the temperature was increased to 24 percent however, their brown fat melted away.
This suggests that by getting used to lower temperatures in the home this winter, we will benefit from an increase in brown fat and a concomitant reduction in obesity levels!
