You have 30 Billion Fat Cells and Here’s What You Need To Know About Them

Technology has taught us things we would have never have believed. Just how the heck did someone count our fat cells, and when we are trying to control our fat, it does make it seem like an uphill battle when you think about these actual numbers.

Not all these 30 billion fat cells are quite the same, some fat is white fat, and some is brown fat and yes we also have something called beige fat!

White fat stores our energy, brown fat releases it.

In the process of the release white fat has to convert to brown fat, during which it is called beige fat. Babies and hibernating bears have a lot of brown fat. Adults actually have some brown fat cells within their white fat cells that is what technically is beige fat.

Brown fat cells have lots of little drops of lipids. These cells also have an abundance of mitochondria. The mitochondria have iron, and that iron content is brown.

White fat has a single large fat globule, few blood vessels through and the cells have very few mitochondria. The white fat produces some estrogens and the fat hormone leptin which makes you hungry.

Hormones other than estrogen and leptin affect fat accumulation or fat release including cortisol, epinephrine, glucagon and at least 6 others.

Those with excess of white fat are more at risk for heart disease, diabetes, bad knees, sleep disorders, arthritis, and cancer.

The wrong diet and lack of exercise makes you accumulate too much fat, but specifically too much white fat, and it makes you brown fat not work correctly and you cannot properly form or use your brown fat cells.

Sound dismal? Wondering how to control your 30 billion cells, that’s what we want to discuss at Women’s Health Practice!