Is it lazy to just post my own tweet and call it an article? You decide.
Reducive stress(RS) vs Oxidative stress (OS): they are not opposites, RS is the POTENTIAL for OS. Reduced things (NADH, NADPH, GSH) are electron donors. If they give those electrons to O2 it makes superoxide (O2-). You can't make O2- without reduced things. 1/2 https://t.co/x1lEzY9TZB
— FireInABottle (@fire_bottle) July 13, 2022
Brad what are your thoughts on Methylene Blue? It supposedly works as both an electron donor and acceptor and it improves the NAD/NADH ratio. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17928358/
Methylene Blue is very promising, I’ve been hesitating to try it because I have some other things I’d like to try.
Yes but it is a good tweet
Hey.. this is re: the “Pontzer’s Burn and Metabolic Rate Mechanisms” post back in February (comments closed there, so I try here)
Comparing the Hadza hunter gatherers and the sedentary office workers – Peat has mentioned that the Russians developed a different model of calculating metabolic rate that includes energy consumption of the brain. Maybe those office workers, though physically at rest, have engaged brains. Does it matter the type of work? Does just doing rote numbing paperwork burn as much as creative engaged thinking? I don’t know. How much is the brain of a someone engaged with their environment, scanning and figuring out how to get the things they need – the brain is highly active too. How much does it contribute to their metabolic rate.
As for the “Why did the metabolic rates of the conscientious objectors bounce back in the Keys study but not in the Biggest Loser contestants?”
The biggest losers were also exercising at high intensity (cardio? strength training / muscles? endurance? etc) – maybe this has something to do with wrecking their metabolism…
Brains use a lot of energy. I think around 20% of all. I don’t know if there’s a way to tell the difference between brain energy usage and the rest in a living human?
A bit off topic but still related:
Lately it seems you move away from emphasizing lipolysis or having elevated FFA in the blood to be burned and signal satiety, as you have written about previously.
Now you write about how beneficial glucose burning is and it seems yours and georgis views align quite well. (For him at least lipolysis is the devil and must be prevented in all kind of ways).
So whats your current opinion?
Fat burning bad?
Lipolysis bad?
IR bad?
Elevated FFA post prandially bad?
This is a good point. My opinion HAS shifted on post-prandial lipolysis. Diabetics have high post-prandial lipolysis and this is probably why they can’t burn glucose – the ensuing NADH/acetyl-CoA blocks pyruvate dehydrogenase assuming that the fats are high in MUFA/PUFA, which are coming form stored fats if you’re obese.
Fat burning is fine as long as it’s the right kind of fat, but again you have a problem there if you are full of stored MUFA, which is the case in obesity. This is why I’m arguing for using things such as alpha lipoic acid to help contain the inevitable rise in NADH from burning MUFA.
Brad
There is a problem here, although it is common sense that ROS can cause cell damage, what I have seen in Tibet is that people just eat pure butter and tsampa with some meat, almost no vegetables at all (no antioxidant food), And the UV rays there are terrible, the oxidative stress is very high in this kind of place, but i found they live longer, there are old people in their 90s everywhere, and there are very few cases of cancer (there are statistics less than Most of the rest of China), is it balanced because high NAD+ levels repair cell damage? Perhaps also because high AMPK levels inhibit mtor?
Although ROS can damage cells when it builds up innapropriately, the generation of ROS is built into the very machinery of our cells. It’s usually a good thing. Antioxidants are dicey, they are the source of ROS as well as the sink (NADPH drives antioxidant defense and NOX enzymes use the reducing power of NADPH to create ROS). As to tsampa and butter, I’ve actually commented on this exact diet before:
https://fireinabottle.net/the-french-diet-in-china/
Hey Brad, have you seen this article by Georgi Dinkov?
It states that PUFA depletion might be accomplished in 30 days (!)
https://raypeatforum.com/community/threads/pufa-depletion-can-probably-be-accomplished-in-30-days.4954/
I hadn’t seen it, thanks for posting. I don’t find this shocking… PUFA are preferentially released by lipase enzymes and preferentially oxidized. Then you have to deal with the MUFA.
Brad