The Effects of Exercise on White and Brown Adipose Tissue Cellularity, Metabolic Activity and Remodeling

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  FIGURE 1. Diet induced obesity leads to pathological expansion and remodeling of WAT resulting in fibrosis, inflammation, and hypoxia. Exercise stimulates browning of WAT (primarily in mice) through the secretion of various hepatokines and myokines that improves metabolic function. Additionally, exercise stimulates angiogenesis, reduces fibrosis, hypoxia, inflammation, and cell size. It is still unclear how exercise may modulate the adipose progenitor niche and influence de novo adipogenesis and conflicting results have been observed in terms of lipokine secretion (e.g., adiponectin and leptin). In BAT, obesity decreases tissue mass and metabolic function. Interestingly, exercise appears to also decrease BAT mass and metabolic activity, however, this does not prevent improvements to systemic metabolic health with exercise. White adipose tissue; WAT, brown adipose tissue; BAT, fatty acid; FA, fibroblast growth factor 21; FGF21, interleukin-6; IL-6.