Muffin top, blubber, bingo wings, saddle bags, love handles,
rolls and cankles. There are lots of words used to described
nearly every pudgy part of the human body. Researchers at the
National Institutes of Health (NIH) would like to add one more
word -- useful. Dr. Monica Skarulis is the Director of the
Metabolic Clinical Research Unit at NIH. "Fat," Skarulis says,
"is not all bad." While this may seem contrary to what most of
us think, NIH scientists are actually using high-tech gadgets
like the Bod Pod to find out how to flip the energy-burning
switch on our fat. Inside air-tight, live-in labs, NIH
researchers picked up on the weight-loss secret that lumberjacks
and pearl divers have always known: Lowering a person's body
temperature turns up their metabolism. If you're trying to get
rid of the jiggle around your waistline, it's not realistic to
live in a lab or stay chilly all the time. So, researchers are
working on a way to tweak the metabolic pathway --specifically,
the type of fat that revs up when ou