I have always been quite fascinated with research, especially in the area of fitness (huge shock there!). The body is such an interesting creation and its processes, whether they be beneficial or detrimental are in a word, quite intriguing. I found information about a study from Harvard researchers in which they discovered a hormone produced in response to exercise that may be turning people's white fat brown, and in the process lessening their susceptibility to obesity, diabetes and other health problems. This study provides remarkable new insights into how exercise affects the body at a cellular level.

Scientists have believed for some time that muscle cells influence biological processes elsewhere in the body, beyond the muscles themselves. In particular, they have suspected that muscle cells communicate biochemically with body fat. But just how the muscles "talk" to the fat cells was the mystery. Until this study that is; which examined human and animal muscle cells. The scientists closely examined the operations of a substance called PGC1-alpha, which is produced in abundance in muscles during and after exercise. The increases in PCG1a in muscles resulted in a bump up of a protein known as FNDC5 and later named "irisin" (follow me, please!!). The protein, allegedly, enters the bloodstream and the fat cells, where it begins turning regular fat - especially deep, visceral fat - into brown fat.

You're probably getting a headache by now so let me get to the relevance of this. Brown fat, is physiologically desirable. While white fat cells are essentially storehouses for fat, brown fat cells are metabolically active. They use oxygen and require energy and burn calories. So this study suggests that irisin, and exercise, partially determine how much brown fat each of us contains.

Other experiments with muscle cells from human volunteers who'd completed a controlled, weeks-long jogging program found that they had much higher levels of irisin in their cells than before the exercise program began. In essence, irisin appears to be one of the more important missing links in our understanding of how exercise improves health, other than the more obvious benefits such as heart health.

There is a lot more work to be done to understand entirely how this hormone works but it does raise interesting questions to me. Such as, if FDA approved, will this hormone be available to the very obese, disabled, and those unable to exercise to alter the ratio of white to brown fat? And OF COURSE the weight loss industry will jump on that bandwagon and sell irisin capsules that will promise a sleek and trim bod (ugh).

As if there aren't enough as it is. . . ..this gives you all yet ANOTHER reason to keep it moving!