Study: Losing weight harder when you're older

The 'good' fat becomes less efficient as humans age

Published On: Jan 03 2014 11:07:33 AM EST

As humans age it seems like losing weight to achieve a certain goal weight becomes even harder than ever.

The Daily Mail reports Japanese scientists believe they seemed to figure out just why people can't seem to shed the pounds when aging. Instead the weight hangs onto a person.

Scientists say this is because the 'good' fat is less efficient. 

There are two different fats; white, which lies underneath the skin and brown fat, which is the good fat. 

When people eat too much it leads to white fat, while brown fat induces heat to break down the white fat. Over time though, scientists say the inducing of heat in the brown fat starts to decrease thus the bad fat hangs onto those who are older. This ultimately makes it harder for older people to lose weight. 

By studying a group of mice the scientists think they could possibly be onto a solution to rejuvenate the brown fat to start break down the white fat like it used to during the younger ages.

The study showed by stopping a certain gene it caused the brown fat to stop working.