Nature's major discovery: succinic acid may be a diet drug!

July 19, 2018 / BIOON / - a group of researchers from the United States and Canada found that the administration of succinate metabolites to mice on a high-fat diet could prevent obesity In their study, published in nature, the researchers explained why they studied the metabolite and why it prevented obesity in mice Sheng Hui and Joshua Rabinowitz from Princeton University evaluated the study in the Journal of the same period and discussed the possibility of using the metabolite to treat human obesity Photo source: CCO public domain researchers noticed that when people and other animals consume energy faster than they burn to produce energy, they get fat, and the extra energy is stored in white fat But they also noticed that people and other mammals have another kind of fat, brown fat, which doesn't store energy, but burns energy and burns calories in the process They further found that burning these substances could prevent weight gain Previous research has found that it can promote brown fat combustion to produce heat when the body is cold But the specific mechanism is still a mystery In the new study, the researchers found the mechanism and even proposed a possible new way to fight obesity The researchers found that brown fat burns more energy when muscles start to shake, so they explored what happens inside brown fat cells In the process they found an increase in succinate metabolites They also found that when the body cools, muscles shake and release succinic acid into the bloodstream, and brown fat cells absorb succinic acid to encourage them to burn more substances to produce heat When the researchers added succinic acid to the drinking water of mice on a high-fat diet and monitored them for some time, they found that these mice did not gain weight compared with the control group The researchers think their findings suggest that succinic acid may be used to help people lose weight But they say that because humans have less brown fat than mice, the effect on humans may not be as significant Reference materials: Evanna L mills et al Accumulation of successful controls activation of adobe tissue thermogenesis, nature (2018) Doi: 10.1038/s41586-018-0353-2