I love the feeling of the transition to fall and the chill in the air that allows me to wear my favorite winter sweater, jacket, beanie, and gloves. Drinking a pumpkin spice latte to stay warm is the perfect accompaniment. On the other hand, I also love the feeling of a surprise 55 degree day in the middle of winter when I can leave my parka at home and enjoy the warmth of the sun on my skin. In fact, it’s so warm that I consider going to the beach to tan!
I learned that the reason why our reaction to the same temperature can be vastly different is because of the substances in our bodies. Kids and teens are able to handle cold weather better than adults because their bodies have more brown fat. Brown fat is a type of fat that is tightly packed with mitochondria, which is the powerhouse of the cell. It is located in certain areas of the body, such as the neck, shoulders, upper arms, spine, and belly. It is used to heat up the blood and keep the body warm. Babies are born with more brown fat than adults, and its peak age is in the teen years. Working out your brown fat by exposing yourself to the cold for extended periods of time increases its volume. After a month of exposure to cold temperatures, men from Maryland had significantly more brown fat than when exposed to warm temperatures. This gives us insight into why 55 degrees in the winter can feel much warmer than 55 degrees in the fall. Brown fat not only keeps us warm, but also correlates to lower risk of diabetes and heart disease.
Studying the effects of brown fat using cold exposure is difficult, because it’s hard to measure the exact amount of cold exposure. Therefore, scientists are attempting to activate brown fat with medication, such as Mirabegron, to study how burning it affects us biologically.
We still have a lot to learn about brown fat, but we do know that our bodies use it to adapt to cold weather. This means that when a child doesn’t want to put on a coat in the winter, it may be due to them having more of it than adults.