Award-winning scientist and science communicator Ainissa Ramirez explains how copper changed our language. Then, learn about the surprising health benefits of brown fat.
Award-winning scientist and science communicator Ainissa Ramirez explains how copper changed our language. Then, learn about the surprising health benefits of brown fat.
Additional resources from Ainissa Ramirez:
Largest study of brown fat ever shows just how healthy it is by Grant Currin
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Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/how-copper-changed-our-language-w-materials-scientist-ainissa-ramirez
CODY: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from curiosity-dot-com. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about how copper changed our language, with award-winning scientist Ainissa Ramirez. Then, you’ll learn about the surprising health benefits of brown fat.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
When you lock your door or install an app on your phone, you're influencing technology to do what you want. But what you may not always realize is that technology is influencing you right back — and today we have a guest who will tell us the hidden ways that technology has dramatically changed society. Ainissa Ramirez is an award-winning scientist and science communicator, and author of the book "The Alchemy of Us: How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another." And she's going to tell us how copper wire influenced the way we speak.
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Again, that was Ainissa Ramirez, an award-winning scientist and science communicator, and author of the book "The Alchemy of Us: How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another." It just won the AAAS Subaru Prize in the category of Young Adult Science Book! You can find a link to pick it up in today's show notes. Tune into Curiosity Daily for the next couple weeks to hear more great stories from Ainissa; she’ll be back next Thursday to tell us how the clock and the lightbulb changed our health in surprising ways.
Not all fat is made equal. I’VE ALWAYS SAID THAT, AND I ALWAYS WILL. BECAUSE YOU SEE, humans have two types of fat: white fat and brown fat. And a team of researchers has just published the largest study to date on what brown fat means for health: it found that brown fat is really good for you.
Brown fat is a pretty new topic for researchers. They knew babies had it, but it was only spotted in adult humans for the first time in 2009. Researching brown fat is hard because not everyone has it in their body, and it lies deep inside those who do. So deep that researchers need to use PET scans to measure it. But PET scans expose people to radiation, so you can’t exactly go scanning people willy nilly. It only really makes sense for a patient whose doctor is, say, scoping out a potential cancer.
That’s why the researchers behind this study took an unusual approach. Instead of collecting the data themselves, they collaborated with a cancer institute to review more than 130,000 PET scans that already existed. They came from about 52,000 cancer patients.
The results taught the researchers a lot about brown fat. For one, it’s surprisingly rare. Only 10 percent of the people in the study group had any brown fat at all. That figure might be a bit low because cancer patients are asked to do things to decrease brown fat activity before their cancer scans, since brown fat can sometimes look like a tumor. It’s also uncertain whether their PET scans are representative of the general population, since they were all being tested for cancer.
But the most interesting finding is that people with brown fat have a lot less trouble with chronic diseases. For instance, just over 4 percent of people with brown fat had type 2 diabetes. That’s compared to nearly 10 percent of the patients without brown fat. People with no detectable brown fat were also about 10 percent more likely to have abnormal cholesterol, and on average, they had more problems with hypertension, congestive heart failure, and coronary artery disease.
Researchers don’t quite know why brown fat is good for people, but it might have something to do with glucose. Brown fat burns glucose and produces heat. That might help keep blood glucose levels low, which would reduce a major risk factor for diabetes.
That could be part of the story, but researchers still have a lot to learn.
I know what you’re wondering: how do I get some of that brown fat for myself? Well, we don’t know how to get it, but we do know a bit about how to activate brown fat if you already have it. Studies suggest that cold temperatures can help — like exercising in the cold and turning your thermostat down at night. Caffeine might also rev your brown fat activity. But there are some sure-fire ways to boost your health. Sure, brown fat is still being studied, but eating right and exercising are health fixes with plenty of evidence.
Let’s do a quick recap of what we learned today
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CODY: Today’s last story was written by Grant Currin, and edited by Ashley Hamer, who’s the managing editor for Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY: Today’s episode was produced and edited by Cody Gough.
CODY: Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!