According to a new study in Scientific Reports, Kyoto University researchers discovered that fish oil transforms fat-storage cells into fat-burning cells. Sounds fishy, doesn’t it? Well, for those of us wishing to reduce weight gain later on, it may be just the thing we need.
The oil activates receptors in the digestive tract, fires up the sympathetic nervous system, and induces storage cells to metabolize fat.
Fun fat fact: not all fat tissues store fat. There are three types of fat tissues:
- “white” cells, or so they’re named, store fat to keep up energy supply
- “brown” cells metabolize fat to maintain body temperature and decrease in number as we age
- “beige” cells, which, after being recently discovered in humans and mice, act like brown cells by metabolizing fat and decreasing in number with age
Knowing that without these metabolizing fat cells, fat continues accumulating (something most don’t want), the team investigated whether the number of these beige cells could be increased later in life by taking in certain types of foods.
Time to buy some fish oil
“We knew from previous research that fish oil has tremendous health benefits, including the prevention of fat accumulation,” said senior author Teruo Kawada. “We tested whether fish oil and an increase in beige cells could be related.”
During testing, the team fed one group of mice fatty foods and other groups fatty food with fish oil additives. The results are music to our dieting ears—the mice that ate the fish oil gained 5-10 percent less weight and 15-25 percent less fat compared to the other group.
The team also found that when the sympathetic nervous system was activated, beige cells formed from white fat cells, showing that certain fat-storage cells acquired the ability to metabolize. Another happy reality for those seeking to lose those last five pounds.
“People have long said that food from Japan and the Mediterranean contribute to longevity, but why these cuisines are beneficial was up for debate,” explained Kawada. “Now we have better insight into why that may be.”
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Feature Image: Thinkstock
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