Torpor, the composition of fats alias how to talk to one's own body
What is a torpor? It is a state of vital signs that occurs in certain animals. It can take hours, days or weeks. It reduces metabolism, lowers body temperature, and builds up and saves fat stores.
You may be wondering why to deal with this phenomenon when one does not fall into such a state. Really?
Have you ever heard the advice that if you want to lose weight, you should eat less and move more? You need to expend more energy than you eat, don't you? In principle, yes, but evaluating the value of the energy emitted is not as easy as it seems at first glance. Even the usable energy intake is quite uncertain and does not equal the tabular energy value of food. It depends on how the food is processed by your metabolism. Only a small part of the food is immediately "burned", most of the energy will be stored in stock for worse times.
You probably already know that fats and sugars are stored differently. Your body has a memory of your habits, it constantly adapts and assumes something. With your eating habits, you have taught your body how to handle food. Maybe good, maybe bad. In any case, your body does everything to survive relatively bad habits.
With food you give the body signals, but unfortunately you probably have no idea what signal it is! Then you get angry that the body doesn't want to lose weight even when you eat almost nothing, you jogging, but the body blows in. And it only diligently listens to your instructions given by the diet. In order to communicate with our body, we must learn its language. Such a language is the amount and composition of food, but above all the composition of fats.
The composition of the diet does not control the relationship between energy storage in fats and glycogen. The body determines the optimal ratio for itself. For example, if we eat only rice, which contains 90% carbohydrates and 10% protein, but no fat, the body will make the necessary amount of fat itself and store it. Similarly, if we eat a so-called ketogenic diet with almost no carbohydrates, the body will produce glucose itself and store it in the form of glycogen. So if there is enough food, the glycogen levels in the body are usually supplemented first and then the fats are stored.
But what if food is scarce? The body will make up for the shortage of its own reserves and whether it will start saving or not will be decided by the previous history of the diet stored in fats. If you have eaten like when a squirrel is preparing for winter, then you will start saving energy, lowering your temperature and slowing down your metabolism.
The composition of fats can control the amount of energy expended on thermoregulation and the efficiency of converting chemical energy into mechanical energy of your muscles. On request, your body can work very economically, save energy, for example, store energy even if you do not have enough with respect to the energy released. Or, conversely, it can waste energy, consume supplies, act as a stove, heat and waste, and operate with low energy efficiency. Don't you believe?
It is interesting to see how much food our non-obese ancestors ate. The amount of food has always depended on financial means, but it is certainly not possible to say that they ate little. In 1939, the Americans ate 2,500 to 4,500 kcal per day. This is completely comparable to today's value of 2500 kcal. They probably ate more calories than we did, but they made them warm. Not on stored fats like us. We store energy.
Is it possible to control it? Maybe all you have to do is turn certain genes on and off, control the activity of enzymes and thus regulate the levels of important hormones. Yes, it seems to be working. The whole system is incredibly complex, I'll try to simplify and clarify it somehow.
We already know the hormone insulin. It can be easily controlled through the amount of carbohydrates in the food. It's a hormone building stock for worse times. If you store fat, you have a lot of insulin. However, if the stored fats are highly saturated, they will not activate energy saving metabolism.
Another hormone is leptin. It's a hormone that signals you have enough in the stock. Its elevated level tells the body that it can waste energy, that you do not have to save, you can drown. If you are wearing a lot of fat, you have a lot of leptin.
However, the signal of leptin that you can make heat and waste energy can be suppressed by the activity of the PPAR gamma enzyme. This forces the body to the storage of fats, reduces the speed of fat burning and suppresses fat consumption even if we have already stored enough. This is advantageous for preparing for a longer period of deficiency. This condition is called a torpor. And it seems to work specific way in humans as well.
Another important signal is the activity of enzymes that ensure the "production" of fats from fructose or glucose. It is a production line composed of enzymes FAS (production of palmitic acid), ELOVL (extension to stearic acid) and SCD1 (desaturation to palmitoleic or oleic acid). This apparatus is essential for the proper storage of fats, as pure saturated or unsaturated fats cannot be stored. It must always contain a certain ratio of saturated and unsaturated fats. SCD1 desaturase activity is a good indicator of PPAR gamma activity. In addition, the product of this production line, oleic acid, is also a weak stimulator of PPAR gamma. An even better PPAR gamma stimulators are omega-6 and omega-3 polyunsaturated fats and their breakdown products. The more unsaturated the fats, the more it stimulates the energy saving mode, torpor (hibernation / attenuation). They lower body temperature, activate enzymes to store fats.
By incorporating polyunsaturated fats into the stored fat, a positive feedback is created which maintains this state even without external stimulation. In addition, the body tries to replace polyunsaturated fats with monounsaturated oleic acid. It increases the desaturase activity and stores more oleic acid, which further promotes this condition. The saving mode, torpor, is thus kept stable even without further replenishment of polyunsaturated fats, even without food, in animals throughout the winter, in humans perhaps even in a lifetime.
In animals, this works by stuffing acorns, nuts, seeds or sweet fruits before the winter and ensuring a high content of unsaturated and polyunsaturated fats in their body stores. This activates the fat storage mode from all food sources. This diversion of energy towards storage causes a greater hunger because the body's cells do not receive an adequate amount of energy. And leptin resistance ensures that as long as there is something to eat, fat stores are replenished even when there is already enough fat. Survival over the winter is ensured. During the winter, unsaturated fats are also released, which ensures the continuation of the saving regime with reduced body temperature.
That's right, the recommendation to consume polyunsaturated fats leads to poor fat burning, their storage as if we were expecting a future shortage, to eternal hunger, to obesity. This mode is used by nature for cushioning during the winter. It disappears itself in the spring after the anuimal consumes all fat reserves. But not in humans.
How to get out of it?
Animals use fasting as the way out of the torpor. Some people too. It works, but it's probably not the way for everyone. Until you will use all of your fat stores, you will continue to return to the torpor. It is encoded in the composition of fats in adipose tissue. It would be better to somehow control the hormones, turn on and off some genes so that the enzymes make the necessary changes and interrupt this signal, encoded in our fat stores.
In principle, it should be enough to support thermogenesis, heating. Heat generation is possible through mitochondria, which instead of making chemical energy ATP begin to waste energy, thereby creating heat and at the same time reducing muscle efficiency. You then consume more energy when making a movement than when you make the same movement in power save mode. It looks good. But you probably know that you can't get out of power saving mode by reducing energy intake. Advice to eat less and move more can only deepen your energy saving regime.
Could MCT oil work this way? It is well known to increase thermogenesis. There are a number of studies that show a preventive effect. For example, this study looked at what causes the replacement of 5% fat with MCT oil in a diet containing a total of 82% fat and overeating. The results clearly confirmed the protective effect of MCT oil in the diet. If a regular meal contains at least 10 g of MCT, it will protect you from metabolic syndrome.
The author of the blog Fire in the bottle recommends sterculia oil. It blocks the activity of the enzyme SCD1 (desaturase). Any reduction in the content of unsaturated and polyunsaturated free fats in the blood can lead to a reduction in the tendency to economically metabolize. It is possible that the C8:0 acid in MCT oil also blocks the activity of desaturase, but I have not found any study to investigate this. This could be done purely on the basis of a comparison of the structure of these oils. (Update: I now think this effect of MCT is mainly contributed by its elevation of microsomal omega oxidation of almost all fats. End product of subsequent beta oxidation is succinate, which in TCA cycle produce FADH2 for electron transport chain to produce ATP and simultaneously contribute NADPH production by malic enzyme needed for PUFA beta oxidation by DECR enzyme, especially in liver, where there isn't possible to make NADPH from glucose.)
I even know one unorthodox method that will cause confusion in your head. Many people still claim (eg Professor Lustig) that all metabolic problems are caused by white sugar (sucrose and fructose). But this is not the case. Dr. Walter Kempner showed this in his research on the rice diet as early as in the middle of the last century. His diet, consisting only of unsalted cooked rice, white sugar and fruit juice, has very successfully fought high blood pressure and enormous obesity. How is it possible? I'm just guessing the explanation, most carbohydrates are converted to saturated fats, and by some mechanism, probably a signal of enough energy, desaturase is blocked and leptin activity is restored. This will increase thermogenesis and turn off the economy mode (torpor).
And one more interesting study at the end. This time not on humans, but on a species of pig that is metabolically very similar to humans. They are prone to obesity and in adition are perhaps the only species to suffer from a heart attack as humans. This study, in turn, confuses those who believe in omega-3.
The experiment examined three groups of young growing pigs for eight weeks. One group was given a standard low-fat diet and compared it with two groups with an increased soybean oil intake (45% calories). One group received standard soybean oil (7% ALA), the other use modified soybean oil without omega-3 alpha-linolenic acid (ALA). It is the most common omega-3 acid in plants. It is more unsaturated than omega-6 linoleic acid (LA).
How did it end up? The control group developed as normal, without metabolic problems. The group on standard soybean oil was a bit obese, with insulin resistance, high blood sugar, simply metabolic syndrome. The most interesting, however, was the group depleted of omega-3 ALA. Pigs seem to be halfway there, they don't have insulin resistance yet, but was a little obese, they take in more calories (all pigs could eat at will) so was hungrier than in the control group.
It can be seen that even a small amount (3%) of omega-3 in the diet in the form of ALA (ie plant omega-3) only worsens the situation. This is an important finding, but it is consistent with the assumption that omega-3 ALA is more unsaturated. Polyunsaturated vegetable fats should be avoided. Although they may initially improve insulin resistance in the short term, lower LDL cholesterol, the long-term effects are devastating!
References:
The Cruel Irony of “Eat Less, Move More”
Leptin Increase Your Metabolic Rate And Keeps You Lean By Making You Inefficient at Walking
Treatment of Hypertensive Vascular Disease with Rice Diet
Robert H. Lustig, M.D., M.S.L.
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