And that's a good thing if youv'e been following the latest research on body fat. If you read the post from Monday you know that brown fat is in the news.

We left off in that post thinking about ways that the body might activate brown fat and trigger all the health benefits that would entail. Well, the latest research on the subject confirms that exercise and a hormone released in response to exercise, might do just that.

The recent reseach, done by scientists at the Dana Farber Cancer Institiute and Harvard Medical School, sheds light on how muscle cells communicate with other tissues in the body. In this case, they studied how a substance produced in muscle cells in response to exercise leads to changes in the composition of body fat.

The substance is called PGC 1- Alpha and it is produced by muscles during exercise. This substance increases the production of a recently discovered hormone called Irisin. It's irisin that is repsonsible for the change that has fat researchers very excited.

It appears that irisin has the unique ability to turn visceral white fat, brown. That's the big news and exactly where the research left off in 2009. Exercise just may be the key to producing more of the metabolically desireable brown fat.

Brown fat burns more calories, decreases insulin resistance and helps prevent the development of type 11 diabetes.

There are questions that remain though. In studies in people that exercised there was not significant weight loss associated with increased irisin production. There were health benefits though.

These individuals were resistant to further weight gain and they had fewer biomarkers for the development of diabetes. You would think that extra brown fat, or the conversion of white fat to brown fat would lead to significant weight loss, but that was not the case in this study. Perhaps the research did not go on for long enough.

In any case these reseachers are not through yet. They wiil continue to study the effects and health benefits of exercise.

For now we know that exercise is good for everyone. Those of us at normal weight can prevent weight gain and convert white fat to brown. Even those of us carrying a few extra pounds wil benefit from exercise. We'll be less likley to gain more and less likely to develop diabetes.

That's good news for everyone and for their dogs. It's quite likely that something that happens in mice and people also happens in pets.

Just one more reason to take a hike with your dog.