Fat-Loss Science

Research into weight loss, particularly fat loss, is one of the most dynamic fields thanks to the health benefits this offers to the increasing number of obese and unhealthy among us, and, of course, the commercial implications and possibilities of potential breakthrough treatments and interventions. Here’s a quick summary of what the ‘lab coats’ have discovered of late...

- Pedro Van Gaalen

ADDITIONAL WAYS EXERCISE BENEFITS WEIGHT LOSS

When you consider exercise in the context of the energy-balance theory of weight loss, the idea that you can’t out exercise a bad diet holds true. However, researchers at Harvard have discovered that exercise also produces a hormone that boosts the body’s ability to burn stored energy, in this instance, fat.

In 2012, a research team at Harvard Medical School led by Dr Bruce Spiegel man published a study in the journal Nature that found that exercising muscles produce a hormone called irisin. This hormone travels throughout the body in the blood, and alters fat cells by changing the predominant type of fat cell – white cells that store energy in the form of fat – into metabolically active brown fat cells that continue to burn energy even when exercise has ended. The study was conducted on mice, but these findings are also often applicable to humans, especially as we also produce the hormone. What’s more is that the effect this hormone has on metabolism could also make it the reason that even moderate amounts, helps to reduce insulin resistance, which is a precursor to type-2 diabetes.