Question: How does brown fat admit heat?

Charlotte Green answered on 8 Mar 2016:

Yay I am glad some people have learnt about brown fat from the chat earlier. So until recently scientist thought that only babies had brown fat but we now know that most adults have it too. It is located around your neck mostly in small patches. It can only be seen if you have a special scan called a P.E.T scan and you also have to be made really cold in order for the brown fat to be made active and be seen on the scan. One way they do this is to put you in a vest that is pumped with cold water in tubes. brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

A lot of work is being done to see what is the function in humans of brown fat. We know in animals that it keeps them warm and is activated when they shiver. brown fat is special because it has a high amount of a special protein called UCP-1 which causes energy in the cell to be released as heat. Which is then thought to keep us warm. This is a very energy demanding process so it is thought it could help people lose weight if we could have more brown fat or activate it more but all this is still being researched and will take time to know if brown fat really works in humans in this way.