Hormonal
Aging causes a progressive decline in brown adipose tissue (BAT) mass and thermogenic activity, primarily through mitochondrial dysfunction, reduced sympathetic nervous system stimulation, and hormonal shifts, leading to age-related metabolic alterations.
As you age, your body's ability to burn fat for heat (via brown fat) naturally declines due to changes in hormones, nerve signals, and cell health. This contributes to weight gain and metabolic issues. While you can't stop aging, understanding this process highlights the importance of maintaining metabolic health through lifestyle factors that may support remaining brown fat function, such as staying active and managing stress/hormonal health.
Aging is characterized by an increase in adiposity and a decline in brown adipose tissue (BAT) depots and activity, and UCP1 expression. There are many possible links to age-associated involution of BAT, including the loss of mitochondrial function, impairment of the sympathetic nervous system, age-induced alteration of brown adipogenic stem/progenitor cell function and changes in endocrine signals.
Why this rating
The paper is a review citing multiple human and rodent studies, providing strong mechanistic evidence, though direct long-term human intervention data is noted as lacking.
Source
Brown and Beige Adipose Tissue and Aging
Elena Zoico et al. · Frontiers in Endocrinology · 2019
DOI 10.3389/fendo.2019.00368
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