Science Gives Us A Potential New Reason To Love Chilly Temperatures

The cold’s not all bad. (Photo: Getty Images)

In case you haven’t seen the news, checked the temperature gauge on your car, or felt the polar chill creeping in through your windows, the country is in serious deep freeze.

Although the weather outside is frightful, science is trying to help us embrace the low temps with new research out of the University of California, Berkeley, and supported by the National Institute of Health, showing that a shot of cold air might help us burn more calories.

In a lab study involving mice, the researchers discovered that lower temperatures actually increase levels of a protein (called transcription factor Zfp516) that science has recently found critical to the body’s formation of brown fat.

A quick note on body fat, because we usually cringe at the word: Fat is not always bad. While white fat stores up energy in the body (a.k.a., where you pack those calories from a cheeseburger), brown fat burns energy to keep us warm.

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For years, scientists assumed brown fat was only really present in babies; today’s controlled, temperate environments have seemingly reduced the need for it. However, new studies have shown adults actually do carry stores of the brown stuff, insulating around crucial areas of the body like the heart, brain, neck, and spinal cord.

In the current study, the more the Zfp516 protein was exposed to cold air, the more brown fat levels rose. On the flip side, when scientists disabled the gene for Zfp516 in mice embryos, the embryos did not make any brown fat.

What’s going on here? The Zfp516 protein seems to activate something called uncoupling protein 1 (UCP1), which the mitochondria in brown fat use to generate heat. This process also helped transform the body’s white fat to be more similar to brown fat in its ability to burn through calories (and thus, potentially, aid in weight loss).

Just getting white fat to behave like brown fat, while not an instant or magical cure-all for weight problems, could help us tackle problems like metabolic diseases and weight control.

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"The amount of UCP1 produced by brown-like fat cells will be lower than that of classical brown fat, but since 90 percent of the fat in our bodies consists of white fat, finding a way to make that tissue more brown-like could have a significant impact," lead study author Hei Sook Sul, a professor of nutritional science and toxicology at the university, said in a statement.

While the research wasn’t conducted in humans, it is promising. The proof is in the pudding: researchers found that, when they upped the levels of Zfp516 protein in their mice, those mice gained 30 percent less than controls after administering high-fat diets to both groups.

Understanding which proteins govern how the body regulates brown fat is huge for current research — and possibly improving societal health down the line. “Brown fat is not only important for thermogenesis, but there is evidence that brown fat may also affect metabolism and insulin resistance,” Sul says. All good things.

The scientists think that, by adjusting the amount of Zfp516 protein in the body, we might glean big benefits. “If you can somehow increase levels of this protein through drugs, you could have more brown fat, and could possibly lose more weight even if eating the same amount of food,” Sul says.

That’s future research, though. For now, cold seems to be key.

Interestingly, previous research involving outdoor workers in northern Finland showed those spending more time in cold temperatures have larger stores of brown fat than same-aged workers who spend their days inside — which is what scientists like to see.

Brown fat is cool, unique, and different, because it’s actually functioning within the body, explains study co-lead researcher Jon Dempersmier, a Ph.D. student in nutritional science and toxicology at the university, in the statement.

"Brown fat is active, using up calories to keep the body warm," Dempersmier says. "It’ll burn fat, it’ll burn glucose. So the idea is that if we can harness this, we can try to use this in therapy for weight loss and for diabetes."

And for now, harnessing brown fat’s power may have to do with embracing the chill… which this season’s polar vortex might have us all doing anyway, whether we like it or not.

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