A new study by researchers at Johns Hopkins found that stimulating the brain to create a different type of fat cells could become a future treatment for obesity, according to a release by Johns Hopkins Medicine.
The study, published in Cell Metabolism, found that knocking down a protein in the brain of rats that is known to stimulate eating not only reduced the animals' calorie intake and weight but also transformed their fat into a type that burns off more energy. The rats produced less "bad" fat and more "good" fat that burns off calories and weight.
"If we could get the human body to turn 'bad fat' into 'good fat' that burns calories instead of storing them, we could add a serious new tool to tackle the obesity epidemic," wrote Sheng Bi, study leader and associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins.
Read the release by Hopkins Medicine on obesity.
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