Research
Hormonal
Beige adipose tissue formation declines with age due to defective progenitor cell proliferation and differentiation, potentially linked to changes in the adipose tissue microenvironment and reduced SIRT1 levels.
Your body's ability to create 'beige fat' (fat that burns energy) decreases as you age, partly because the stem cells that make it become less active. This is linked to changes in your body's internal environment and signaling molecules. While this decline is natural, it underscores the importance of maintaining overall metabolic health to support any remaining thermogenic capacity.
GoodSupportsHIGH confidence
Aging is also associated with a reduction in beige adipocyte formation. Beige adipocytes are known to differentiate from a sub-population of progenitors resident in white adipose tissue (WAT); a defective ability of progenitor cells to proliferate and differentiate has been hypothesized with aging.
Why this rating
Based on a review of mechanistic studies in rodents and some human data.
Source
Brown and Beige Adipose Tissue and Aging
Elena Zoico et al. · Frontiers in Endocrinology · 2019
DOI 10.3389/fendo.2019.00368
narrative_reviewCited 202×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
More from this paper
- 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.Good
- Physical exercise, cold exposure, and certain nutritional strategies (capsaicin, caffeine, EPA) can stimulate brown and beige fat activity, offering potential therapeutic targets for age-related metabolic disease.Good
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