North American entity will finance the investigation of a medicine that enhances the production of brown fat, responsible for heating the human body.
in many villages of this Portugal (and, certainly, of the world) there are still those who see in the alcohol a way to warm and protect against the low temperatures that are felt — often the result of cultural patterns.
Science has clarified that alcohol consumption dilates blood vessels, which ends up shifting the flow of blood to the extremities of the human body. Here, the hot liquid passes through the skin thermoreceptors which send heat signals to the brain, which in turn translate into feelings of safety and welcome.
However, this method is a farcesince, although the sensations of heat are real, the fact that the blood passes close to the skin means that the heat will be more easily drained by cold weather, which increases the chances of hypothermia, writes the Big Think.
despite the a lot of work done by science in this area, the truth is that there is no medicine that makes the human body resistant to the cold — a reality that may change in a near future.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a US entity, announced the funding of a research which aims to discover a drug that boosts the fat-heating activity in the human body. Jerzy Szablowskian assistant professor of bioengineering at Rice University, will be responsible for lead the effort.
blanket of brown fat
It is a concept unknown to many, but the truth is that in the human body there are various types of fatbeing the white, which stores calories, the best known. already the brunette, which gets its color from a preponderance of energy-producing organelles (the mitochondria), dissolves stored white calories to produce body heat. This constitutes, as a general rule, 1% (or less) than the weight of the human body.
“If there were a drug that makes most active brown fat, so instead of spending weeks and weeks adapting to the cold, you can perform better in a few hours,” Szablowski said in a statement. The investigator imagines that the medicine can be administered to individuals suffering from hypothermia or, for example, polar explorers.
The results of previous searches seem to provide the authors of the current investigation with some extremely useful clues. For example, in October of last year, scientists at the Scripps Research Institute were able to identify a metabolism produced by the body, called myristoylglycine.
This system allowed the creation of brown fat cells in laboratory rats without resulting in side effects.
While the results of the current research are not known, there are some tips and gestures that can be adopted by individuals who are more subject to the cold. For example, the physical exercisehas been scientifically proven to turn white fat into brown.
At the same time, sleep in colder divisions can also work, albeit with less results. Eating an iron-rich diet with foods like meat and shellfish, grains, vegetables and beans can also increase brown fat levels.
ZAP // 
