Every month, I’ll be highlighting Diabetes research that is going on RIGHT NOW! Harvested from different websites, journals and podcasts, I’ll translate them into understandable English and share them with you. Today: White Fat, Brown Fat, and Beige Fat…how increasing BEIGE fat might fight Type 2 Diabetes.
This was a fascinating read for me, and while I did NOT read the MOST technical article, I did read much of the middle on and all of the Science Daily article.
I’m going to start with four definitions and then how they relate to Type 2 diabetes (T2d from now on!)
Fat (from Wikipedia): “Fat is one of the three main types of macronutrients (giant nutrients) – carbs, proteins, and fats. Fats are found in many foods and are made of giant molecules called lipids. SOME of these are important because the body can’t make them.
White Fat: Used to store energy that runs EVERYTHING in your body: muscles, blood, bones – everything that makes you alive. When your body releases insulin from the pancreas, white fat cells' insulin receptors cause the fat molecules to break into smaller parts called “fatty acids” The fatty acids are taken up by muscle and cardiac tissue as a fuel source, and glycerol is taken up by the liver for gluconeogenesis (…the formation of glycogen, the primary carbohydrate stored in the liver and muscle cells of animals, from glucose.”) White fat also insulates your body, helping to maintain body temperature.
Brown Fat: Originating with muscle cells, it’s found in large deposits throughout the body. It’s especially abundant in newborns and in hibernating mammals present and active in adult humans. Its main job is to regulate the body’s heat by shivering muscle. It also makes heat by non-shivering by breaking down the fat directly so it generates heat. The amount found in the body decreases as humans age. In contrast to white fat cells, which contain a single lipid droplet, brown fat cells contain numerous smaller droplets and a much higher number mitochondria (the powerhouse of the cell). Brown fat also contains more capillaries than white fat. These supply the tissue with oxygen and nutrients and distribute the produced heat throughout the body.
Beige Fat: “Cold temperatures induce the generation of beige fat cells. There appears to be a “cooperation network” between the beige fat cells and an immune cell activation. Future investigation into how these cellular communication networks change with age could be exploited to inform new strategies against “age-associated fat mass expansion” (old people getting FAT) and “metabolic decline” (old people don’t burn fat off as fast as kids do!)”
The studies want to find out how white, brown, and beige fat interact with T2d.
According to classical view, the main function of white fat is to store excess energy in the form of triglycerides. Brown fat is a thermogenic tissue that’s important in maintaining the core body temperature. White fat cells can TURN INTO these beige fat cells, becoming more like the ‘better for you’ brown. In other words, the beige fat cells adipocytes ACT like brown fat under the stimulations of exercise, cold exposure and other factors. This phenomenon is also called the ‘browning of white fat’.
So – why should us T2ds CARE???
This “browning” of white fat into beige fat speeds up the intake of glucose AND MOST IMPORTANTLY OF ALL: reduces the insulin secretion requirement needed to convert glucose to stored sugar and then the conversion back again. This MAY be the foundation of a new strategy to improve glucose metabolism and lower insulin resistance.
Link: This is from the magazine ADIPOCYTE in the November 2021 issue
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7801117/; and an article between THESE two: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211124720305477?via%3Dihub
(This is a link to the VERY DENSE article in a journal called NATURE COMMUNICATIONS The article was submitted to the journal in 2021 and not published until April of last year: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-37386-z.epdf?sharing_token=lqv3kPGNLIHJxQyZvxBFs9RgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0MJeC-m42OPBaujM1-RVqh1IumycYyPQVgtxSSqlK-ihIren53WkaqtT7UoLCbhBbnWuR6qgyVr1NsESE9CHNNIlt7YGfxeLfFuLCeEMIFX67DDCRq06fnMka3VKoSWIyo%3D
Image: https://asploro.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Diabetes-Research_Open-Access.jpg
Image: https://asploro.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Diabetes-Research_Open-Access.jpg
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