Will Turning the Thermostat Down Help You to Lose Weight?

Now there may be another good use for turning down the heat. This ain't just about conversing energy any more baby. Now, it's all about losing weight. That's right folks, if you simply turn down the heat, your body could burn and get on the quick train to getting firm. Here's why. Research published in The New England Journal of Medicine last week suggests that if you bring the thermostat down to a frosty 61 degrees or less, you just might lose some weight. Hopefully, people won't get the temptation to eat more because they are cold. That wouldn't be good at all.

The reason why this should work is because of the presence of what is called brown fat. Brown fat is also known as good fat. Yes, there is actually some good fat in our bodies. It's not all bad. Hooray!

Brown fat burns off calories and helps our bodies to generate heat. Since this fat helps to generate heat, it does not just settle along our waistline like other types of body fat.

For a very long time, it has been known that brown fat helps the bodies of infants and other mammals generate heat when they are not able to effectively shiver. However, it was thought that after humans began to shiver, the calorie-consuming effects of brown fat were lost. It has been concluded that this thinking was definitely in error. The study discovered that even after the body begins to shiver, the brown fat is still working. This is especially so when the body is exposed to chilling temperatures.

When lean and obese people were compared, it was found that brown fat was more present in lean people than obese people. This finding suggests that the absence of brown fat may play a role in weight gain.

What does this all mean? There is a hope that perhaps in the future a pill could be developed to increase one of two things: either the amount or the activity of brown fat. Most pills and dietary supplements are created to simply reduce appetite. A pill that increases the amount of energy expended would be the first of it's kind.

However, in the meantime, sitting in the cold is simply no substitute for proper diet and exercise. So in the meantime, all we can do is exercise, and maybe every once in a while, have a seat near the freezer. Just kidding. We can just turn down the heat a bit to help reach our weight loss goals.

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