Articles

The problems of weight loss: you may have insufficient bat

Late one summer afternoon, I received a call from our nutritional counselor at the medical clinic. "Carol, I think you need to talk with one of our patients. She's about seventy-five pounds overweight and can't lose it. We've put her on a calorie-restricted diet, on a carbohydrate-restricted diet, and on a fat-restricted diet. We've checked her thyroid and her hormones, but nothing works. She's desperate!"

Wow. I love a challenge, but I wasn't sure I wanted to undertake this one. I agreed to call her. Sure enough. She was not a happy woman. She elaborated on the counselor's story, telling me about the enormous stress she had been under the past few years, how obesity had changed her life .drastically and that if she didn't lose the weight, she really didn't want to live!

When confronted with a client who doesn't do well on tested and tried protocol, it's tempting to say, "Well, obviously she's not complying with the diet." But I find that approach so demeaning, so professionally uncaring and self-serving, that I can't do it.

Here was a woman who was obviously motivated to change her diet but even with the best of intentions and strictest compliance, the scales didn't budge. The doctor and I started looking for other answers and found the solution in the unlikeliest place—her own store of body fat. What we're talking about here is two kinds of fat, both of which are beneficial in the right amounts and are involved in the burning of excess calories.

The body fat we're all familiar with is what scientists call White Adipose Tissue (WAT). WAT helps to insulate our internal organs from the cold and cushions them from shock and trauma. It acts as a storage depot for toxic materials that burden the liver, and it serves as an emergency source of energy when the food supply runs low. However, WAT is metabolically inert. That is, it's incapable of contributing much energy or heat to the body.

The primary job of every cell in the body is the production of energy which keeps the body alive and functional. Carbohydrates, fats, and to a lesser degree proteins are drawn into the cell and through a complicated series of biochemical events, are burned to produce heat and energy, much the same way that wood or oil stoked into a furnace provides heat for our homes and offices.

"At forty-three, I'm just coming into my prime. I want to get better, feel better, so I’m not embarrassed to put on a pair of shorts, take off with my kids, and do things with them."

JANE

Think of each cell as a tiny energy-burning factory. These little factories contain mitochondria, the site of energy production. Some cells contain only a few mitochondria; others contain hundreds or thousands. Tissues that are metabolically very active, as is liver tissue, contain up to 2,000 mitochondria per cell. A human egg (the ovum) may contain up to 300,000 mitochondria per cell. (Never underestimate the power of a woman!) WAT cells, on the other hand, contain only one or two mitochondria; over 85 percent of the total WAT cell volume is a globule of fat.

However, there is a metabolically active form of body fat, not so well known, whose importance is just now becoming a hot research topic in some major research institutions around the world. Brown fat, or Brown Adipose Tissue (BAT), stimulates thermogenesis or the production of heat. If researchers can discover how to use this type of fat more efficiently, they just might reduce the world's weight problem once and for all.

BAT is formed in utero at about the twentieth week and is deposited primarily in the back of the neck, throughout the organs in the abdomen, between the shoulder blades, around the blood vessels in the thoracic region (the heart and lungs), on top of the kidneys, beside the breast bone, beside large blood vessels, and especially along the spinal cord and key bones. The position of BAT throughout the body keeps key organs warm and disperses heat throughout the rest of the body.

For a period of several months or years after a child is born, BAT actively burns calories to produce heat through a process called Cold Induced Non-Shivering Thermogenesis (CINST). Ever notice that babies never shiver? They don't need to. BAT keeps them warm, much in the same way that bears and other hibernating animals sleep through the cold winter months without suffering from hypothermia.

BAT is not the only organ in the body that produces heat, which we will see in the next chapter on the thyroid gland. Certain organs of the endocrine system maintain their own thermostat, which can lower or raise the core temperature as needed to keep the body at 98.6 degrees. However, if BAT is present in sufficient quantities or is actively functioning, our bodies will be much more efficient, not only in the production of heat but also in burning excess calories.

It is in the burning of heat through the wasting of calories that we begin to see the value of BAT from the standpoint of the dieter. As we discussed in chapter 2, associating calorie counting with weight control becomes a meaningless exercise because calorie requirements fluctuate from day to day, from moment to moment, depending on both internal and external conditions.

If your body is not efficient at wasting unneeded calories via BAT activation, you can't help but gain weight, regardless of how few calories you consume! The very process of food restriction can cause the thermogenic process to shut down because the body becomes more efficient. As we reduce food consumption, we don't need as much energy to fuel the body, and it slows down further and further. Finally the body begins to store calories instead of wasting them.

*23\319\2*