In this series I often mention that mitochondrial ROS production creates physiological insulin resistance which keeps your cells in “fat burning mode”. In this paper, the authors actually took a picture of fat burning mode!! They asked human subjects to eat a low fat vegan diet for two days and then gave them a banana milkshake that contained 24 grams of stearic acid – a long chain saturated fat. At the beginning of the experiment, after they had been eating the low fat vegan diet, their mitochondria were isolated and fragmented. Within three hours of consuming the stearic acid shake, their mitochondria literally fused together into long chains. This is fat burning mode!
In addition to showing the fused mitochondria, the authors showed that a blood marker of fat oxidation, acylcarnitine, dropped, indicating that the cells were indeed in fat burning mode. Cool stuff!