Tuesday, November 09, 2004

brown fat

it was freezing in my house today. funny enough, i was the only one who thought so... and it's not like i had a fever or anything. i walked into the kitchen and my grandma cracked up cuz i was covered head to toe: hood, sweatshirt, coat, gloves, sweats, wool socks, and fuzzy slippers. she was only wearing a set of scrubs. one of us just HAD to be waaay off, i thought... but i touched her arm and she was warm, and she touched my hand and realized that i really was freezing. what's up with that?! u know what i need... some brown fat. cuz being too cold is just one of those things that renders me completely useless. no kidding. i can't get anything done cuz i can't get over how cold i am, and i can't stop thinking about how i wish i were warmer and what i can possibly do to get warmer. the best solution i've found was to take a hot shower... but alas, a shower can only last so long. another effective thing i've found was to dress myself in layers, go completely under the covers, curl up into a ball and remain completely still. needless to say, these solutions don't leave much room for multi-tasking... or any means of productivity for that matter... unless u count thinking... hmmm... wouldn't it be great if i could use the energy i put into thinking to generate heat? u know, i may just choose my mandarin study location based on climate... whichever one's closest to the equator :)

3 comments:

juice said...

it's the first time i've heard of this term - brown fat... care to tell what it means and where it's from? is it a grace-ism, reginaspeak or is it something that i'm just not up-to-date with?

btw, although China would be good to learn the language and somewhat a bit more of an adventure I think... I might lean towards Taiwan for no particular reason.. i only vaguely remember being there once when i was a kid... You can learn Tai Gi as well...

how often do you come up with the something like the quarantine analogy down there? you seem to have put so much thought in it.. and i dun blog anymore coz there's no more time... tho i never really did...

grace said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
grace said...

[oops above]

bio students would know what i'm talking about... hehe. i found a short explanation for u:

"Brown fat" is called such because of its color in gross specimens. Brown fat is brown because it's very heavily vascularized and because its cells contain thousands of mitochondria, which lend an overall brown cast to the fresh specimen. Brown fat is thermogenic tissue: its only function is to generate heat. Energy released from the fat molecules is given off as heat, which is subsequently transferred by the liquid phase of the blood to warm other parts of the body. The mitochondria of brown fat cells have the ability to decouple the oxidative dephosphorylation from the electron transport chain. Thus, when the terminal phosphate group of ATP is cleaved off, energy is not passed to the electron transport chain. Instead, it's released as heat.

let me know if u dunno what any of the terms mean. i'd be THRILLED to go into further detail, hehe... seriously... this was one of my favourite topics in class. my 4 years in university weren't a complete waste :)

as for the whole 'quarantine' theory... i dunno, these things just occur to me. i call them my 'eureka moments' and they come fairly quickly cuz my mind's usually set on warp speed. what takes a long time is getting it out of my head and into a means of communication by which the rest of the world can effectively grasp what i bloody mean. heh.