Talk:Brown adipose tissue

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this should be a separate article far away from "adipose tissue" (a link would suffice) yeah akjfl v akf jaslkjfa jakfja sjfla;s afja'fj 'aslfja —Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.21.231.151 (talk) 16:11, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Eskimos who sleep in igloos retain their brown fat. I read it in Survival of the Sickest by Dr. Sharon Moalem.

perhaps under heat generation in Plantae (see for inspiration: http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20031213/bob9.asp)

Function in plants
Similar cells are also present in some plants, helping them survive in the winter. Other plants such as the Titan arum use specialized cells to raise their temperatures to as high as 38 celsius to enable volatile chemicals to be given off. These chemicals smell like rotten meat and attract flies to the plant, which results in pollination. In both cases the plant has uncoupling proteins in these tissues that uncouple the mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation to produce heat.

No ATP
Brown fat does NOT produce ATP. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.197.116.25 (talk) 00:24, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

BAT in birds
I removed the mention of migratory birds from the lead paragraph. Although there have been some reports of BAT-like tissue in birds by histological criteria, there have been no studies of the functionality of this tissue in thermogenesis, and thus no real evidence that it is authentic brown fat. In any case, birds should not be mentioned in the lead.StN (talk) 16:25, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

New York Times Article
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/09/health/research/09fat.html 98.208.56.158 (talk) 03:30, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks. --Nbauman (talk) 17:54, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

History of Brown Adipose?
I don't have references for much of this but I'll do my best to rectify that. My information is anecdotal and stems from personal communications with one researcher whose interest at one time lay in brown adipose tissue (BAT) and mechanisms for activating it.

The existence of BAT in adults (even into the 70s) has been known for many decades.

During WWII women working in munitions factories in England complained of elevated body temperature and unexplained weight loss. It transpired that chemicals involved in the production of munitions were "switching on" BAT deposits that were previously thought to disappear in early childhood.

In the early 1970s I knew a researcher at Oxford who provided me with this background; he subsequently went to Cambridge to join a group investigating possible alternative methods of controlling BAT activation.

In the 1990s I contacted him again to see how research had progressed. It hadn't gone well. The group had been unable to identify anything that was "safe" enough to use clinically as a BAT activator and so work stopped.

I'm pleased to see that interest in the subject has re-awakened but to suggest that it's only recently that BAT's existence in adults has been discovered is wide of the mark. I'll see what I can do to offer supporting evidence. AncientBrit (talk) 18:38, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Myf5: surface marker?
From the article: "Both have the same marker on their surface (Myf5, myogenic factor), which white fat cells don't have."

Myf5 is a regulatory factor in the cell, not on the cell's surface, as I understand it. Can somebody verify this?

Padder333 (talk) 20:14, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Beige fat
Right now Beige Fat redirects here but the article does not reference it. For reference: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120712131525.htm -- Jake (talk) 17:17, 22 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Indeed: Beige fat redirects to here, but this article so far does not mention beige fat at all! --2A02:810D:780:6BC:5C66:4B86:8FD8:1FD7 (talk) 14:30, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Proposed merge with Interscapular brown adipose tissue
Needless fragmentation, could easily be displayed on this article under 'other animals' section LT910001 (talk) 01:08, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for proposing merger, agree fragmentation needless and possibly even omits the interesting information on intercapsular brown adipose from access by user that has not searched for all articles (content) on brown adipose. Kdarwish1 (talk) 06:20, 3 April 2014 (UTC) ✅

Review for updates
placed an "outdated" tag but hasn't listed the sections that need updating. Thankfully JCI this month carries a review of brown and beige fat: 10.1172/JCI78362 JFW &#124; T@lk  14:49, 3 February 2015 (UTC)
 * I have a bad habit of not considering others when adding tags. There are multiple points that are outdated, and there are a large number of reviews that could be helpful. I'll list them below. -- CFCF  🍌 (email) 17:06, 6 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Also for an example, interscapular BAT is mentioned as only existing in other animals in this article. Recent studies (which have been reviewed multiple times) show that it is not. -- CFCF  🍌 (email) 17:08, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Non mammals?
Do any other animals which are not mammals possess BAT or similar tissue? Wythy (talk) 11:27, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

Brown fat is only in body=trunk in humans?
The anatomy part of the Wikipedia article requires medical education to understand quickly, which is OK, as long as we also give a simple explanation. So is the brown fat only in Trunk=Body? Not in limbs = arms&legs? Not in thighs and not even in "ass"? So "ass" fat is white fat? ee1518 (talk) 13:06, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

beige fat
beige fat seem to be distinct from brown fat


 * '"In addition, beige/brite cells have a gene expression pattern distinct from that of either white or brown fat cells."' ( https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24567786 )
 * '"These three types of adipose cells have many specific characteristics related to localization, cell composition (lipid droplet, mitochondria), function, pathways of homeostatic control, obesity related changes, and so forth [8, 10]"' https://www.hindawi.com/journals/sci/2016/6067349/

perhaps making one article for brown and one article for beige would be better? --Vatadoshufrench 09:51, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

"High-fat-diet induced obesity" - unsourced notes on the origin of obesity
In the section on BAT in adults, every-other-day fasting is mentioned as a way to improve the proliferation of BAT, and as a way to cure obesity. The mechanism by which EODF cures obesity is the reason I am creating this talk page section. EODF and IF cures obesity because the insulin level in the blood remains on the low side of normal for such an extended time that the fat on the body can be lipolysed and turned into betahydroxybutyrate and (once the glycogen runs out) glucose. This lowered insulin level is also why people doing IF and EODF will need to drink more water and will be physiologically driven to eat far more salt than the WHO recommended daily limit (which is set far too low). As far as I know, biology isn't stupid, and if we were evolved to eat 33% more salt than we needed, and there was no way for the body to get rid of that salt without major side effects... we wouldn't be here. The only two macronutrients that create an appreciable rise in insulin in the insulin-genetic, and the only two macronutrients that require an appreciable injection of insulin in the insulin-agenetic (type 1 diabetic), are carbohydrate and protein. Protein elicits roughly half to 2/3 the insulin response that the equivalent weight of carbohydrate does, and does so many seconds to minutes later. Insulin is known to cause weight gain, by itself, and to continue to do so during caloric restriction. Eating a high fat diet that contains adequate protein, and does not have nearly any carbohydrate, will not cause much insulin release. It is true that you wear the fat you eat - most of the fat on a person's belly is re-esterified from the diet, but the reason it's not burned is because a diet that causes someone to wear fat will be high in carbohydrates - 30-65%, and thus will elicit an intense insulin response, shutting down fat-burning. Just how off-base am I? I'll find some studies once I've slept. Ellenor2000 (talk) 14:50, 9 February 2019 (UTC)