Coffee makes you lose weight, a new weapon against obesity and diabetes: a cup burns fats

Scientists have discovered that drinking a cup of coffee can stimulate "brown fat" (brown adipose tissue), which means that the most popular drink in the morning could be a weapon against obesity and diabetes. Let’s see together how scientists have come to this discovery, how coffee can burn fat and why it could be useful against obesity and diabetes.

The study

To find out the effects of coffee on our fat, the experts initially studied stem cells to understand if this drink was able to stimulate brown fat. Once the right dose was found, they switched to testing on humans and, using the thermal imaging technique, traced the ‘brown fat' reserve in the body of the participants. In doing so they could see that coffee actually stimulates the "brown fat".

But why brown fat?

Brown adipose tissue (called "brown fat") is one of the two types of fat found in humans and other mammals. Initially attributed only to children and hibernating mammals, in recent years it has been discovered that it is present also in adults. Its main function is to generate body heat by burning calories, as opposed to ‘white fat', which is instead the result of the storage of excess calories. Scientific studies have shown that people with a lower body mass index have a greater amount of "brown fat". "Brown fat" acts differently from other body fats and produces heat by burning sugar and fat, often in response to cold. Increasing its activity improves blood sugar control and improves blood lipid levels and excess calories burned help you lose weight. However, until now, no one had found an acceptable way to stimulate his activity in humans: now we know that a cup of coffee is a great help.

Coffee against obesity and diabetes

 This thing is not only useful to keep us fit, but it could be exploited to understand how to tackle the problem of obesity, which is affecting more and more people in the world, and diabetes itself.

The study, titled "Caffeine exposure induces browning features in adipose tissue in vitro and in vivo" was published in Scientific Reports.