EASY weight loss always comes with a catch. A plant extract has helped obese mice burn off the calories without exercise 鈥� but there are concerns over its safety.
The fight against obesity gained ground in 2009 with the news that our bodies carry deposits of brown adipose tissue 鈥� a type of fat that burns calories by turning energy into heat. Since then, researchers have been trying to ramp up brown fat activity.
Enter berberine. A plant extract found in many Chinese herbal medicines, it has been in animals. at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine gave it to mice every three days for a month. Scans showed that their brown fat burned more calories than that in mice not given the extract. There were also signs that the animals鈥� ordinary fat had begun to act like brown fat. As a result, the mice had better control over their weight (Nature Communications, DOI: ).
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It鈥檚 quality research, says at the University of Helsinki in Finland. But even if the results are repeated in people, berberine may not be the answer. Work by Huttunen suggests .
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淧lant extract boosts calorie-burning fat鈥�
