Brown fat activation affects metabolism and is a target for pharmaceutical development, though not sufficient alone for weight loss.

“You'll get a lot of naysayers out there saying, "Oh, brown fat doesn't regulate metabolism at all." And the reality is there's thousands of researchers trying to pill up brown fat and thermogenic. They're trying to make it a pill because it does affect metabolism. It's not the only thing. It's certainly, if you're obese and trying to lose weight, you're not going to do that just by doing cold exposure. You need to do dietary and exercise changes predominantly, but it does affect metabolism. And this has been shown in human studies, so it is an interesting, it's another possible mechanism for affecting metabolism, and that's an adipose tissue, but you also make more mitochondria and muscle tissue.”