Radical News: Scientists Turn â”Badâ”Fat to â”Goodâ”

Marlon Mata
May 20, 2011

In the fight against obesity, there seems to be no shortage of radical ideas.

This is seems to be that case when a team of scientists from John Hopkins have discovered a way to convert white fat (the one that simply accumulates in the body) into brown fat (the one that is easily converted into energy). From their experiments in rats, suppressing a protein in their bodies that stimulate appetite produced interesting results.

According Dr. Sheng Bi, team leader, from the John Hopkins School of Medicine, his team may have found a way to help overweight people burn fat better. Brown fat is a type of fat that is commonly found in babies. This is considered as “good”since it is used to generate heat, burning calories in the process. However, when they become older, these are slowly replaced with white fat. Also known as “bad”fat, white fat is simply stored energy that accumulates around the waist. White fat is not easily burned, and they are often the reason for a person to become obese.

Doctors and scientists have long been searching for ways to increase production of brown fat. With this breakthrough from John Hopkins, the answer seems to be near.

Radical News: Scientists Turn â”Badâ”Fat to â”Goodâ” The approach is unique. Bi and his colleagues wanted to know how rats would behave if they suppress a protein in their brain (called NPY). In doing so, appetite and food intake decreased significantly. Even when they were given a high-fat diet, they still did not increase weight. Upon studying the fat composition of rats, they also discovered that much of the white initially has been replaced with brown fat.

This discovery opens up new opportunities for obesity research in humans.

“If we could get the human body to turn bad fat into good fat that burns calories instead of storing them, we could add a serious new tool to tackle the obesity epidemic,”according to Dr. Bi.

Radical News: Scientists Turn â”Badâ”Fat to â”Goodâ”

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