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Thursday 13 October 2011

Orexin


I have recently read a report that may help with our fight against obesity. The fat that we generally see as body fat is called white fat. There is also another type of fat, known as brown fat. It was thought, by scientists, which after infancy humans no longer produced brown fat. However, recent research has shown that it is still present in adult humans.

Why is this important though? Well, according to the report, brown fat is so full of blood vessels and mitochondria. This is important as it makes brown fat very good when converting calories into energy. However, with obesity, this process malfunctions, making it more difficult to convert the calories into energy.

A study that was published on October 5th, explains that orexin, which is a hormone the brain produces, activated the calorie burning brown fat in mice. The study suggests that an orexin supplementation could be a new way of treating obesity and other metabolic disorders.

These findings could be so valuable, in my opinion. If it turns out that these are affective then it could lead to a lot more healthy people in the world. Hopefully this research proves fruitful.

2 comments:

  1. Always have to be careful with hormone therapy. This sounds like a step in the right direction though.

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  2. Absolutely. It definitely needs more research but hopefully it could help a lot of people. Thanks for dropping by.

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