Contrary to popular belief, decreasing the rate at which the human metabolism burns fats could actually increase fats consumption overall. Scientists at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center studied several mice for an extended period of time, in an attempt to find out what happens when dedicated genes responsible for catalyzing energy are suppressed. They discovered that, instead of shutting down as they expected, the metabolic system simply “switched” to back-up energy, employing less effective means of burning fats to energy.

 

Leslie Kozak's team was puzzled to notice that mice kept in cages at 20° C (68 °F), which is a relatively low temperature, did not show any signs of obesity after their Ucp1 (mitochondrial uncoupling protein) and Gdm (glycerol 3-phosphate dehydrogenase) genes were completely inhibited. They should have started gaining weight and eventually become obese, because their organisms no longer had a means to burn fats and generate energy. This energy is of the utmost importance, as it keeps up the bodily heat of all warm-blooded animals. The mice should have either become obese or frozen to death.

 

Instead, their bodies proved extremely resilient, and adapted to the changes by employing alternate routes of energy processing. As a side effect of this less effective process, they actually burned more fats than they would normally have, which meant they didn't gain any weight at all, nor did they freeze to death. After 10 weeks at 20° C, they were placed in environments with temperatures of 28 °C (82 °F). The scientists noticed no changes in the way fats were burned inside their bodies, which means that the mice had already adapted to the new configuration in their systems.

 

This research opens up new ways of looking at diets and physical exercises, as it turns out that bodybuilders and dietitians have been going about the weight problem the wrong way. While they attempt to stimulate the burning of fats in the human body by increasing the metabolic function, it now seems that the best way to go is to actually inhibit this function, and let the body develop secondary ineffective methods of generating the heat it requires.