Researchers at Maastricht University in the Netherlands wondered if Hof’s abilities stemmed from a high concentration of mitochondria-rich brown adipose tissue, also known as brown fat. This little-understood tissue can rapidly heat the body when it metabolizes its fuel source: ordinary white fat. Brown fat is what allows infants—who don’t have the muscles to warm themselves like most adults—not to succumb to cold in their earliest months. Usually brown fat mostly disappears by early childhood, but evolutionary biologists believe that early humans may have carried higher concentrations of it
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