Bad Fat Into Good Fat

Can Exercise Make Bad Fat Into Good Fat?

By Regie Simmons

In the old Westerns it was always easy to identify the bad guys because they always wore black. But, in the ensuring decades it has not been as easy to delineate the good from the bad. Bad guys don’t always were black, and every once in a while a so-called bad guy actually turns out to be a hero.

Recent research sponsored by the American Diabetes Association and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is actually proving incredible insight into a notorious “bad guy,” and forcing researchers to rethink how we view good and bad fat.

Body fat The Good and the Bad
Did you know that your body has two kinds of fats? No, seriously. Just like the fat that you can consume in foods, your body is naturally comprised of both good and bad fats. The question that researchers have been asking for years, is how we can increase the amount of “good fat” while reducing the bad?

Body fat or adipose tissue, as it’s known in biology, actually plays several vital roles within the body. In addition to insulating the body and cushioning internal organs, body fat serves as an energy store and secretes hormones such as leptin and estrogen. Brown fat or brown adipose tissue is considered to be “good fat” and is common to humans, rodents and small mammals. It was once believed that brown fat only existed in infants, but was discovered in adults in 2009. Researchers found small deposits of brown fat in the necks of adults undergoing
radiology scans.

Researchers believe that brown fat may hold weight loss secrets that would benefit overweight and obese individuals. It’s also believed that brown fat may aid in diabetes. In infants and adults, brown fat actually generates heat to warm the body when it is exposed to cold temperatures. To generate heat, the brown fat, mainly located in the neck and upper chest, burns calories through a unique thermogenic
processes that raises the basal metabolic rate (BMR).

Brown fat is very different from white adipose tissue or white fat that develops from a sedentary lifestyle combined with poor diet. A certain amount of white fat is beneficial and necessary for bodily functions, but problems arise when too much accumulates within the body. Elevated levels of white fat especially abdominal fat are related to several disease including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and metabolic syndrome. Excess white fat is also seen in obese and overweight individuals.

More than one-third of American adults and almost 17% of youth are obese. Globally, approximately 400 million adults are obese and an additional 1.6 billion people are considered overweight. A person is considered obese if his or her body mass index (BMI) is equal to or greater than 30, whereas an overweight person has a BMI between 25.0 and 29.9. In addition to being associated with serious diseases, white fat also does not burn calories like thermogenically active brown fat.

The question remains, how many calories does brown fat burn?
It’s estimated that brown fat can burn an additional 100-250 calories per day. While this isn’t a huge number, it is significant given recent research showing that obese American women exercise for less than one hour annually. Men fair slightly better, with almost four hours of vigorous exercise per year.

To read the full Article by Regie Simmons purchase Vol 6 Issue 5 of Natural Bodz Magazine through this link Click Here