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- The BAT-pause!
The BAT-pause!
Plus: what makes the ringing in your ears worse (and how to fix that)
The 10almonds Team
May 22, 2024
Today’s almonds have been activated by:
Want the health benefits of vinegar, but don’t like the vinegary taste?
Enjoy aged balsamic vinegar; it becomes sweeter the older it gets.
(it doesn’t have to be very old to start tasting sweet, by the way; here’s a mid-range example!)
In A Rush?
Today’s 30-Second Summary
If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:
Of different kinds of fat our bodies carry, brown adipose tissue (BAT) is the healthiest
Today’s main feature examines new evidence that the slowing of BAT metabolism (that’s bad) in older age is not due to age itself, but a reduction in estrogen levels
This does mean that menopausal hormone replacement therapy can have an extra benefit, as it can maintain BAT metabolism at pre-menopause levels.
When did you last have your hearing checked? It’s easy to let things slip away from us, but it doesn’t have to be that way.
Today’s sponsor, Hear.com, are offering the most cutting-edge dual-processing technology in hearing aids that isolate and separate speech from background noise, now with their latest most advanced device yet!
Read on to learn more about these things, or click here to visit our archive
A Word To The Wise
Watch and Learn
What Makes The Ringing In Your Ears Worse?
Prefer text? The above video will take you to a 10almonds page with a text-overview, as well as the video!
Wildcard Wednesday
When Cold Weather & The Menopause Battle It Out
You may know that (moderate, safe) exposure to the cold allows our body to convert our white and yellow fat into the much healthier brown fat—also called brown adipose tissue, or “BAT” to its friends.
If you didn’t already know that, then well, neither did scientists until about 15 years ago:
You can read more about it here:
This is important, especially because the white fat that gets converted is the kind that makes up most visceral fat—the kind most associated with all-cause mortality:
Visceral Belly Fat & How To Lose It ← this is not the same as your subcutaneous fat, the kind that sits directly under your skin and keeps you warm; this is the fat that goes between your organs and of which we should only have a small amount!
The BAT-pause
It’s been known (since before the above discovery) that BAT production slows considerably as we get older. Not too shocking—after all, many metabolic functions slow as we get older, so why should fat regulation be any different?
But! Rodent studies found that this was tied less to age, but to ovarian function: rats who underwent ovariectomies suffered reduced BAT production, regardless of their age.
Naturally, it’s been difficult to recreate such studies in humans, because it’s difficult to find a large sample of young adults willing to have their ovaries whipped out (or even suppressed chemically) to see how badly their metabolism suffers as a result.
Nor can an observational study (for example, of people who incidentally have ovaries removed due to ovarian cancer) usefully be undertaken, because then the cancer itself and any additional cancer treatments would be confounding factors.
Perimenopausal study to the rescue!
A recent (published last month, at time of writing!) study looked at women around the age of menopause, but specifically in cohorts before and after, measuring BAT metabolism.
By dividing the participants into groups based on age and menopausal status, and dividing the post-menopausal group into “takes HRT” and “no HRT” groups, and dividing the pre-menopausal group into “normal ovarian function” and “ovarian production of estrogen suppressed to mimic slightly early menopause” groups (there’s a drug for that), and then having groups exposed to warm and cold temperatures, and measuring BAT metabolism in all cases, they were able to find…
It is about estrogen, not age!
You can read more about the study here:
…and the study itself, here:
What does this mean for men?
This means nothing directly for (cis) men, sorry.
But to satisfy your likely curiosity: yes, testosterone does at least moderately suppress BAT metabolism—based on rodent studies, anyway, because again it’s difficult to find enough human volunteers willing to have their testicles removed for science (without there being other confounding variables in play, anyway):
So, that’s bad per se, but there isn’t much to be done about it, since the rest of your (addressing our male readers here) metabolism runs on testosterone, as do many of your bodily functions, and you would suffer many unwanted effects without it.
However, as men do typically have notably less body fat in general than women (this is regulated by hormones), the effects of changes in BAT metabolism are rather less pronounced in men (per testosterone level changes) than in women (per estrogen level changes), because there’s less overall fat to convert.
In summary…
While menopausal HRT is not necessarily a silver bullet to all metabolic problems, its BAT-maintaining ability is certainly one more thing in its favor.
See also:
Take care!
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You May Have Missed
This Or That?
Vote on Which is Healthier
Yesterday we asked you to choose between watermelon and grapes—both are great, but we picked the watermelon (click here to read about why), as did 61% of you!
Now for today’s choice:
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Click on whichever you think is better for you!
You (Also) May Have Missed
How Useful Is Peppermint, Really?
The Brain-Gut Highway: A Two-Way Street
Women Rowing North: Navigating Life’s Currents and Flourishing As We Age (book)
One-Minute Book Review
The How Not to Die Cookbook: 100+ Recipes to Help Prevent and Reverse Disease – by Dr. Michael Greger
We've previously reviewed Dr. Greger's "How Not To Die", which is excellent and/but very science-dense.
This book is different, in that the science is referenced and explained throughout, but the focus is the recipes, and how to prepare delicious healthy food in accordance with the principles laid out in How Not To Die.
It also follows "Dr Greger's Daily Dozen", that is to say, the 12 specific things he advises we make sure to have every day, and thus helps us to include them in an easy, no-fuss fashion.
The recipes themselves are by Robin Robertson, and/but with plenty of notes by Dr Greger; they clearly collaborated closely in creating them.
The ingredients are all things one can find in any well-stocked supermarket, so unless you live in a food desert, you can make these things easily.
And yes, the foods are delicious too.
Bottom line: if you're interested in cooking according to perhaps the most science-based dietary system out there, then this book is a top-tier choice.
Penny For Your Thoughts?
What did you think of today's newsletter?We always love to hear from you, whether you leave us a comment or even just a click in the poll if you're speeding by! |
Wishing you a wonderfully healthy day,
The 10almonds Team
