What Doesn't Kill Us

by Scott Carney

The miraculous properties of BAT are just one of many strategies that the body can rely on to accomplish the same tasks. An extremely overweight person with a surplus layer of insulating white fat doesn’t necessarily need to ramp up their metabolism to fight against the cold. The layer of fat alone suffices to protect against moderate exposure.* People who are already in shape, however, might respond much more quickly to cold temperatures, forcing their bodies to generate BAT in order to stay alive. After a series of biopsies to investigate what other possible mechanisms might have helped his patients, van Marken Lichtenbelt discovered that ordinary muscles can also transform under the right conditions and hyperstimulate other cellular mitochondria to accomplish the same results as active BAT. The secrets of the human body are complex and highly dependent on the individual and the method of exposure even if the results are the same. However, more than anything else, this study shows that while a drug might activate one specific pathway to generate heat energy to burn up excess calories, administering that drug might not be the optimal solution. Instead of stimulating the body with a foreign substance, it is probably more efficient to use the environment to trigger the correct and predictable response.