December 18, 2015 — Fish oil has long been known to confer a wide range of health benefits, including boosting the cardiovascular system and potentially even treating the effects of schizophrenia. Now a new study from Japan says it could also help people trying to lose weight.
Researchers from Kyoto University found that mice fed on fatty food and fish oil gained considerably less weight and fat than mice that consumed fatty food alone. The findings suggest that fish oil is able to transform fat-storage cells into fat-burning cells – and if the same process occurs in humans, fish oil could help us reduce weight gain, especially as we age, when our fat-burning cells are in lesser supply.
While we might think of our fat tissue as primarily a fat storage system, this isn’t always so. White fat cells store fat, but brown fat cells metabolise fat to maintain a stable body temperature. Our bodies metabolise fat more easily when we’re young, as we have a greater amount of brown fat cells in youth, but we start to lose them in maturity.
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