A study shows that the process called "Beiging" wherein the white fat cells are converted to brown fat cells can lower the blood sugar levels and combat diabetes. Issued in the journal Diabetes this February, this novel study was fronted by Joseph Baur, Ph.D., an assistant professor of Physiology in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
"Beiging of white fat could be harnessed to fight diabetes by burning excess calories to cause a decrease in blood sugar," Baur explained. "Our work suggests that activates of the mTOR pathways plays a critical role in this process."
Science Daily reports that the stimulation of beige fat cells is a way to battle obesity as this cell type's ability is metabolizing the glucose and lipids and disintegrating the stemming energy as heat.
On the other hand, the white fat cells or the white adipocytes gather energy as large fat droplets while the brown adipocytes have smaller fat droplets and responsible in burning fat to yield heat. The brown adipocytes contain mitochondria that have an iron that enable them to produce heat and give them the brown color.
"Our study highlights the complex interconnection between mTOR signaling and metabolism," Cassie Tran, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow in the Baur lab, said.
"It will be critical in moving forward to determine the specific targets downstream of mTOR that are causing the negative metabolic effects in order to create better drugs and one-day drugs that might also extend health span," the first author of the study explained. "The discovery of a critical signaling pathway for beige-fat formation also suggest the opportunity to target this pathway to therapeutically increase the number of heat-producing cells in obese or diabetic patients."
According to WebMD, there are about 17.9 million people in the U.S. who were diagnosed with this medical condition. Diabetes is the turmoil of the metabolism that involves complications with the hormone insulin. There is no cure for diabetes. Those who are diagnosed with the said condition just need to manage their lifestyle habits and diet in order to stay healthy and reduce the symptoms of the disease.
