DIABETES RESEARCH RIGHT NOW! #47: Fighting Type 2 Diabetes With BROWN FAT!!!

From the first moment I discovered I had been diagnosed with DIABETES, I joined a HUGE “club” that has been rapidly expanding since it stopped being a death sentence in the early 20th Century. Currently, there are about HALF A BILLION PEOPLE who have Type 2 Diabetes. For the past 3500 years – dating back to Ancient Egypt – people have suffered from diabetes. Well, I’m one of them now… Not one to shut up for any known reason, I added a section to this blog…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: Type 2 and Brown Fat???!!! The HECK???

So, let’s talk about “brown fat”.

“Brown WHAT???” my best friend screams at me.

“Brown fat…”

He cuts me off before I can explain. So, putting a symbolic sock in his mouth, tying him up, and propping them up on the couch under 150 pounds of Pyrenean Mountain Dog in his lap, licking his face with a tongue as wide as my hand, I begin in lecture mode: “Brown fat burns energy instead of storing it. Because it burns calories to make heat, researchers are studying it to see how it might help with metabolism and weight management.”

Dr. Greg J. Morton found that these cells use large amounts of glucose to drive this heat production, thus serving as a potential way to lower blood sugar, a key goal for any diabetes treatment. Dr. Morton is working to understand what role the brain plays in turning these brown fat cells on and off.”

OK – I have brown fat. Everyone does. The difference is that brown fat actually generates heat instead of storing heat. WHITE fat CAN be used to generate heat. Adult humans have more white fat than brown fat. White adipose tissue (aka FLAB) dominates the body's energy storage, representing nearly all of standard below-the-skin and external (like my fat belly and flabby lower arms, and double chin) deposits.

Why the difference? Newborns have about 2% to 5% of total body weight as brown fat because babies can’t shiver yet, and shivering generates heat. When they reach the teen years, brown fat naturally decreases as a person grows, until at adulthood, a person has between 0.02 and 300 grams total though some specialized imaging studies estimate brown and beige fat combined may represent up to roughly 10% of total fat depending on cold exposure and individual genetics.

OK – now we know WHY fat is important and there’s a difference between storing white fat (in case I get marooned on Iceland in the middle of winter) and I weight like five pounds and get chilled on a warm summer day) – and I don’t have to shiver like a baby just to stay warm on a warm summer day using – the brown fat!

Research needs to be done on the “Brown Adipose T (BAT)-batokine axis.”!

“In Type 2, this BAT-batokine activity is downregulated which promotes insulin resistance!! It needs to be stimulated. We need to break this circle through new therapies that INCREASE BAT-batokine activity and improve glucose and fat regulation but also have potential for organ-specific therapeutic benefits, including in the heart, lung, kidney, and liver. This would also reduce white fat deposits while preserving or even increasing muscle mass and function due to the therapeutic effects being independent of negative energy balance.

The BAT-batokine axis has finally come of age. Such new therapies would help to lower obesity and multiple other chronic conditions. Rather than JUST weight loss or improving the control of blood sugars, the therapies might create a variety of holistic therapeutic benefits not just in treating diabetes, but on key organs essential for metabolic efficiency and flexibility.”

Who knows WHAT’S JUST AROUND THE CORNER?

Links: https://diabetes.org/research/type-2-diabetes-research-glance,
https://joslin.org/news-stories/all-news-stories/news/2026/04/study-uncovers-3d-dna-switch-in-brown-fat, https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/endocrinology/articles/10.3389/fendo.2026.1949288/full, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9165237/ 

Image: https://asploro.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Diabetes-Research_Open-Access.jpg

GUY’S GOTTA TALK ABOUT…TYPE 2 DIABETES #46: Growing Old With Type 2…

For the first time since I started this blog eleven years ago, it’s going to be about me. I was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes four years ago. While people are happy to talk about their experiences with diabetes, I WASN’T comfortable with talking about diabetes. The “other Type” of diabetes was what caused the death of my Best Man a year after my wife and I got married. He was diagnosed with diabetes when he was a kid. It was called Juvenile Diabetes then. Today it’s Type 1. I haven’t WANTED to talk about diabetes at all. But…for my own education and maybe helping someone else, and not one to shut up for any known reason, I’m reopening my blog rather than starting a new one. I MAY take a pause and write about Breast Cancer or Alzheimer’s as medical headlines dictate; but this time I’m going to drag anyone along who wants to join my HIGHLY RELUCTANT journey toward better understanding of my life with Type 2 Diabetes. You’re Welcome to join me!

I suppose a few years ago, I’d have ignored the article below, “Managing Type 2 Diabetes in Your 70s: A Complete Guide”…but next May, I’ll be turning 70…

 So, this article caught my attention. The author wrote, “Over 25% of Americans aged 65 and older have diabetes, making it one of the most common chronic conditions among seniors.”

That’s a pretty sterile, statistic kind of thing. I’m looking for something I can “work with”, so I’m framing it this way, “If you’re at a birthday part and there are a 100 people in the room, one out of every four of them are going to be Type 2 diabetics.” Now, if it’s a BIRTHDAY party, then you’ll have variously-aged grandchildren (possibly even a few great-grandchildren.) You’ll also have the parents – none of whom are going to be 70+)…so let’s take your group of 100, drop it to 50 people (minus 20 grandkids, and maybe another 30 kids…). Of THAT fifty, you’ve got one in four are T2, so 13 or so will be T2 – 37 will be “normal”…of course, among THEM, you’ll have heart disease, joint replacement…most likely ALL (but a very few) will have glasses of some sort…

So, you’ve got a bunch of geezers whose bodies are falling apart. According to statistics, those of us born in the 1950s have a life expectancy of  “72.5 years for males and 78.5 years for females” [US Social Security Administration]. I assume that includes everyone and so your healthcare and personal choices during your 70-something years of life will modify those numbers – and also if you’ve treatments for various and sundry ailments with impact that life expectancy.

All right, there are the facts. Now, using this guide, what MIGHT I be doing to stretch that out a little farther…oh, WHY? My personal goal is to be alive for the weddings/joinings/significant event celebrations for all four of my (current) grandchildren who range in age from 1 year to 16 years.

What can I do to reach the significant  events of my 1-year-old granddaughter? Say…at 20 years to my current 70. My genetics seem likely to support that goal – as I neither drink nor smoke, and my main life-challenge thus far has been T2. The things the article recommends are NOT fancy pants stuff. It’s pretty straightforward stuff I can do even if I’m not a zillionaire.

I can name a few right off the top of my head:

Exercise: I bike regularly (when it’s NOT winter…here in Minnesota that is an admittedly narrow window…) the rest of the time, I walk. I don’t do any fancy exercising, just (at the height of summer bike between 10-20 miles a week.) During the winter, I walk (when the windchill is unlikely to freeze my skin solid) so let’s between 5-8 miles a week. I DO NOT have biking shorts or walking sticks or down jackets or a fancy bike. It’s all normal stuff.

My A1-c a couple weeks ago was 6.4; so no longer a concern to my doctor. I DO use Ozempic, but NOT for weight control, but for my diabetes; AND I only take it every OTHER week (after conversations with my doctor and reviewing preliminary research that supports the change for people whose blood sugars aren’t wildly out of synch.

 In conclusion? There isn’t a “conclusion” yet. I’m on a regularly monitored (by my doctor) schedule; and frequently read journal articles (I was a science teacher for 41 years. Everything but the DENSEST of “scientific-ese” is something I can parse) on Diabetes research; focusing particularly on T2, but also skimming T1 work as that findings from THERE might be usable down the road…plus, as you’ll know if you’ve read my initial posts, my best friend and best-man died after a diabetic seizure brought on by growing weary of taking care of himself and listening to everyone else’s concerns. He just got tired and his body gave out…

At any rate, I’ll be coming back to this and other articles in future posts!

Source: https://www.nia.nih.gov/health/diabetes/diabetes-older-people, https://allseniors.org/articles/managing-type-2-diabetes-in-your-70s-a-complete-guide/

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