Harvard Researchers Discover A New Fat-Burning Hormone Released When You Exercise

What do you think about when you go for a brisk walk on a beautiful day? The sun and the breeze make it feel good to loosen up your stiff body. One thing is for sure, and that is the last thing on your mind is what’s going on with your body chemistry. When you work out, your body’s chemicals change in ways you wouldn’t have understood earlier. Over the past 20 years, scientists have found natural molecules affecting appetite, metabolism, and body weight in every person. Now, scientists at Harvard Medical School and other places are looking for the molecules that constitute a specific fat-burning hormone that affects your weight. This hormone shows you why exercise is exceptionally beneficial for your health.

A new study may hold the answer to how you can lose fat more efficiently

A new study shows that when you work out, your body releases a hormone that helps you lose weight and keeps fat from forming. In 2012, a group of researchers at Harvard Medical School found the hormone. They called it irisin.

Dr. Anthony Komaroff, a professor at Harvard Medical School, says, “Our muscle cells need a source of energy when they exercise. Muscles get that energy by burning fat and sugar brought to them by the blood. That’s been known for nearly a century. However, it’s not the whole story.”

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Irisin is the fat-burning hormone produced during exercise

A group of researchers led by Dr. Bruce Spiegelman, a professor at Harvard Medical School, put out a new study in the journal Nature in January 2012. The study was done on mice, but it might also be true for humans. The study showed that a hormone called irisin is produced when muscles are worked out.

Dr. Komaroff explains- “Irisin travels throughout the body in the blood, and alters fat cells. Body fat is stored inside fat cells. Most of these fat cells are called white fat cells, and their function is to store fat.”

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Why is some fat necessary for your body?

Why do your bodies keep fat? When you eat more calories than you burn through exercise, the extra calories must go somewhere. Part of them is stored as fat. But humans in the past didn’t eat as often as we do. Forty thousand years ago, our ancestors could only get a good meal a few times a week on the Serengeti. Between meals, they had to have something to keep them going. A big part of it was the fat they put on after eating.

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