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White fat is also called subcutaneous fat, which is usually stubborn and clings tightly to the stomach, hips, and thighs. The other is brown fat, which speeds up metabolism and is easier to burn. Brown fat is found between the shoulders and neck. Everyone should know how brown fat works in the body so that they can activate it and increase the speed of fat loss.
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New Delhi: You've often heard that body fat is bad because having more than a certain amount of fat invites diseases. But very few people know that there are two types of fat in the body. While one type of fat is not good for the body, the other type is essential. The human body has two types of fat: white fat and brown fat.
White fat is also called subcutaneous fat, which is usually stubborn and clings tightly to the stomach, hips, and thighs. The other is brown fat, which speeds up metabolism and is easier to burn. Brown fat is found between the shoulders and neck. Everyone should know how brown fat works in the body so that they can activate it and increase the speed of fat loss.
What do the experts say?
Professor Jan Wilhelm Kornfeld, the author of research on brown fat, says, 'White fat stores calories obtained from food, and its size increases with obesity, causing medical problems.' Brown fat, on the other hand, stores very little fat, but it converts the calories from food into heat, thus burning those calories and preventing weight gain.
Effective in Fighting Obesity
For a long time, scientists believed that brown fat was only found in infants or young children and decreased with age. However, research published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 2009 challenged this notion. The research showed that the most common location of brown fat in adults is the area between the neck and shoulders (cervical-supraclavicular depot), and it may be linked to their body mass index (BMI).
Research conducted in the Netherlands in 2013 found that if healthy adults were exposed to a temperature of 15–16 degrees Celsius for approximately 6 hours daily, their brown fat increased. This clearly shows that brown fat is not only present in adults but can also be activated.
Today, with obesity reaching epidemic proportions globally, researchers believe that activating brown fat can help in reducing obesity.
How to Activate Brown Fat
Research suggests that cold exposure, chili peppers, and GLP-1 medications can activate brown fat, which may prove effective against obesity and diabetes. Tolerating mild cold during winters or taking cold showers can also activate brown fat.
