Question: Could this help people with diabetes

Sonia Rodriguez answered on 7 May 2020: last edited 7 May 2020 2:19 pm

Hi Harvey. Having more brown fat or more active brown fat increases the amount of calories we burn. The more evident effect of this higher burning capacity is weight loss, but different experiments done in mice shown that brown fat helps also in the regulation of glucose levels in diabetic animals. We don’t have so much information in humans, but diabetic patients usually have less brown fat and people with more active brown fat has less probability of being diabetic. Moreover, experiments activating brown fat in healthy volunteers improved also their glucose regulation (which is what is wrong in diabetic patients), so everything indicates that if we increase the amount and activity of brown fat we can help people with diabetes too.
It’s also important to say that a large percentage of diabetics are also overweight or obese, and being obese increases your chances of having diabetes later in life, so both factors are very connected.