Legend has it that coffee was discovered around 850 A.D. in Ethiopia by a goat herder who observed that his animals were unusually lively after eating bright-red berries. Inside those berries were the coffee beans that we enjoy today.
New research has established that drinking coffee could activate the body’s fat-fighting defenses, a discovery that could have potentially significant implications in the battle against obesity and diabetes.
According to researchers at the University of Nottingham, coffee may help stimulate our brown fat reserves, also known as brown adipose tissue, which plays a key role in how quickly we can burn calories.
There are two forms of fat cells, brown cells, and white cells, and each plays a different role in our metabolism. While brown cells help generate heat, white cells are responsible for the storage of fat — or, energy — ready for release as needed. Levels of brown fat are known to be high in children, but recent findings on the presence of brown fat in adults have restored hope to use them as targets to treat obesity.
“Brown fat works differently to other fat in your body and produces heat by burning sugar and fat, often in response to cold, said professor Michael Symonds, from the School of Medicine at the University of Nottingham.
“Increasing its activity improves blood sugar control as well as improving blood lipid levels, and the extra calories burnt help with weight loss. However, until now, no one has found an acceptable way to stimulate its activity in humans.”
The scientists started by testing out coffee on stem cells to see if it would stimulate brown fat. Once they found the right dose, they moved on to humans to see if the results were similar.
So will drinking a cup of coffee help you lose weight, as well as help you get out of bed?
“The results were positive, and we now need to ascertain that caffeine as one of the ingredients in the coffee is acting as the stimulus or if there’s another component helping with the activation of brown fat,” Symonds said.
“Once we have confirmed which component is responsible for this, it could potentially be used as part of a weight-management regime or as part of glucose regulation program to help prevent diabetes.”
That is good progress, to know that your favorite cup of coffee could actually help in weight loss!
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