There are great tales in the medical literature if you look for them. In the 1930’s – the early days of metabolic research – a sort of North-South challenge presented itself. An SEC-Big 10 challenge of metabolic rates (For those who are not American college football fans, the SEC is a Southern Conference and the …
I’ve recently had several run-ins with people who believe strictly in the calories-in, calories-out hypothesis of obesity. I just read Herman Pontzer’s book Burn, so I’ll continue to pick on him for the moment. In Pontzer’s estimation, humans are just calorie-burning machines. Slightly complicated machines, but machines nonetheless. We have a more or less fixed …
I just finished reading Herman Pontzer’s book Burn. It’s good, I recommend it! I don’t agree with everything, though. Pontzer is the metabolic researcher who went to Africa to study the metabolic rates of Hadza hunter gatherers. To his surprise he discovered that hunter gatherers burn the same number of calories per day as sedentary …
Happy New Year! Fire In A Bottle (FIAB) is back! I’m excited for the new year, I’ve got a great slate of upcoming posts, I’m planning a new “overview of FIAB concepts intended for newcomers and those who are less scientifically oriented. I’m going to continue working on the podcast and launch a TikTok channel! …
Loss of Mitochondrial ROS Production Causes Obesity Read More »
Oxidants are electron takers. Anti-oxidants are the opposite: electron donors. OILRIG: Oxidation Is Losing, Reduction Is Gaining. Oxidative stress can be defined as having too high of a percentage of intracellular “redox couples” in the oxidized state. Glutathione, for instance, is the body’s “master antioxidant”. It can live as either the reduced version (GSH) or …
In my last post I recommended a strategy of combining lipoic acid – a natural, mitochondrially produced substance which oxidizes NADH to NAD+ – and succinate, which drives mitochondrial ROS production and oxidation of NADH to NAD+ via the activity of the enzyme NNT. Both of these are designed to shift the redox pool of …
Lactate and the Lipoic Acid Flu, An Hypothesis and n=1 Read More »
I’m using the word global to mean “in all tissues of the body” but I’d forgive you if you thought that I meant “in all countries where they eat vegetable oil”. Either way, really. As I explained in part 1, the production of mitochondrial ROS is a thermogenic loop that wastes calories as heat. If …
On this blog I have argued that: The traditional French diet combining starch and saturated fat results in leanness The richest, least active American men stayed lean on 4500 calories per day in the 1930s Metabolic rate is correlated to saturation level Obese humans have very unsaturated body fat The metabolic rates of Americans dropped …
In the last article we saw that a deficiency in AMPK and SIRT1 activity leads to the inactivation of the mitochondrial SIRT3 deacetylase, acetylated (turned off) mitochondrial enzymes and low metabolic rate. I suggested at the end that to escape this pattern, you have to activate AMPK and SIRT1 at the same time. In this …
I’ve been working on this mega post that was getting too long and complicated. I decided to break it into three or four parts and start at what was going to be the end. I’m feeling really excited about this series of posts because I feel like we’re really getting to the root causes of …
You’re fat because your mitochondrial enzymes are acetylated Read More »
The way that insulin decreases blood glucose is by causing the translocation of a glucose transporter called GLUT4 (GLUcose Transporter 4) from vesicles (little pockets) inside the cell to the cell membrane where it transports glucose into the cell. GLUT4 is said to be “insulin dependent”. When glucose levels inside of cells are high, glycogen …
AMPK Causes Insulin-independent glucose uptake in muscle tissue Read More »
Vitamin D is the sunshine vitamin. When sunshine hits your skin, your body uses the UV rays to convert cholesterol into vitamin D. A theme of this blog has been that obese humans have a torpid metabolism evolutionarily linked to that of hibernating animals in winter. As autumn approaches, consumption of foods high in linoleic …
Vitamin D is a nuclear receptor superfamily member that activates AMPK Read More »
I am a huge fan of Italian bitter liqueurs. I was first introduced to the idea when I was working at Memorial Sloan-Kettering in Manhattan. A co-worker brought in a six pack of bitter soda from a local pizza place. I took a sip. It was revolting. My only thought was, “this tastes like bile! …
Campari is a dual bile acid receptor agonist that activates AMPK Read More »
AMPK is a key regulator of metabolic rate and fat burning. The mainline thinking on AMPK often follows the puritanical view of classic obesity research: AMPK senses LOW cellular energy levels by monitoring the ratio of ATP to ADP and AMP.​1​ This suggests that the best way to stimulate AMPK is by reducing caloric intake. …
AMPK is activated by HIGH cellular energy after a starchy meal Read More »
So like I was saying, biology is weird. AMPK and SCD1 are a literal teeter totter. When SCD1 goes up, AMPK goes down. When AMPK goes up, SCD1 goes down. This matters because, as I pointed out in the last post, AMPK can help to keep us out of torpor. In hibernating animals and obese …
