34 ms·

Inflammation halts fat-burning

133 points by upen 10y ago

DoodleBuggy 10y ago
>"if bodyfat can simply be melted away" Hard to believe this kind of fantasy is still being promoted. Burn more calories than you take in. That's it, that's the secret to losing body fat. It's simple thermodynamics.
- geoka9 10y ago
  Generally true, but there are things to keep in mind (because your body will fight nail and tooth for its fat reserves): 1) You'll be losing muscle before you lose fat 2) You'll be lethargic which can result in no weigth loss because your calorie expenditure will match your (reduced) intake Overcoming these two issues is what most slimming/fitness regiments are about.
  - wdewind 10y ago
    1. This can be heavily mitigated by going to the gym, or doing some kind of resistance exercise. Yes, human beings are required to eat the right amount of food and also exercise in order to maintain health. There is no magic bullet. 2. You would only really be lethargic for a small amount of time as your body adjusts to blood sugar levels. It's important to note that people who are losing weight are not low on energy because they are lacking calories. They have a ton of calories, they just aren't very good at using the fat to maintain blood sugar (yet). This should be roughly a 1-4 week transition, and again exercise will help a lot with it.
    - geoka9 10y ago
      > This should be roughly a 1-4 week transition I wish it was that simple. From the studies I've read and personal experience, the human body stops using fat as its source of energy once it goes below certain percentage (the lower the percentage, the harder it is to make it use fat). It's pure muscle catabolism and low levels of energy from there on, unless you use tricks like intermittent fasting and macro cycling (and resistance training).
      - wdewind 10y ago
        Realistically you're talking about like 12% bodyfat for a male - which is something many of us would dream of. Sorry, but that's absolutely not what's happening with regular overweight people who lose weight, you're talking about micro-optimization for athletes. The deal is whenever you lose weight you lose muscle and fat. All you can do is shift the ratio. Resistance exercise helps shift that ratio. Proper diet (ie: enough protein) helps shift that ratio.
  - dlsym 10y ago
    No it does not. Lost 50 kg doing CICO. To keep your muscle, watch your macros and exercise. Losing weight is actually pretty simple. But I won't argue that it is hard.
    - geoka9 10y ago
      > Losing weight is actually pretty simple. But I won't argue that it is hard. It depends on the genetics, but yes, if you're really overweight, losing lots of weight is generally pretty simple. At some point, though, you'll hit a roadblock and that's when those nuances can become important.
  - MegaDeKay 10y ago
    1) can certainly be influenced by giving your body a reason to hold on to that muscle e.g. weight training. 2) is one of the reasons that coffee exists on this earth :-)
  - greenhatman 10y ago
    Yea, there are lots of studies actually looking at the effect of various foods have on fat burning and obesity. There is definitely more at play than simply calories in calories out. Yes, if you want to lose weight, you need to have a calorie deficit, but certain foods promote fat burning, while others do the opposite. Here are just 3 studies, but there are many many more. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24065788 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24065788 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21621801 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21621801 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22854401 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22854401
- grzm 10y ago
  There are at least two issues with the calories in/ calories burned idea. 1) The method used to measure calories (combustion) is not a proper representation of how calories are metabolized in the human body. We don't have a fire burning inside us. 2) There are different metabolic cycles which determine whether body fat is utilized for energy or whether energy from food is stored as fat. A good reference for this is "Why We Get Fat" by Gary Taubes.
  - wdewind 10y ago
    While 1) is true, it's not significantly true. If we are measuring calories consistently, even if we are wrong about it, we can continue to trend downwards until we are losing weight. There isn't such a massive difference that caloric measurement error is to blame. And for 2) this is really not true at all. Yes, you might store fat temporarily etc., but if you are eating a caloric balance, guess what: that fat has to be used at some point. Taubes is not wrong, but he really overemphasizes a lot of things. People who are obese are not eating just a little over caloric balance but eating the wrong things. They are eating massively over caloric balance. Cutting sugar out might be a good way to get them to comply to a diet that requires them to eat fewer calories, but ultimately for the obese it's really just the calories that are an issue. Imo this warrants more research into the psychological aspects of obesity (the food dopamine reward system etc.)
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      > People who are obese are not eating just a little over caloric balance but eating the wrong things. Obviously, people who are obese and stable in both weight and fat/lean distribution are eating in caloric balance. You seem to be confusing "obese" with "rapid fat gain", which are two different things.
      - wdewind 10y ago
        My major point, which I don't think you disagree with, is that none of this research is telling us anything useful. What we know is that people need to eat a reasonable amount of calories and they need to exercise. That amount is different for different people in different situations, but it's not due to inflammation, or any of the other tiny factors that vary person to person. If you are eating 2000 calories a day and consistently maintaining weight, and inflammation causes you to store some more of your energy intake as fat at some point, you will also burn that fat off at some point. There's no reason to think that small temporary metabolic shifts within a calorically consistent environment cause long term fat gain.
merqurio 10y ago
This is something under active research, and it might have some true behind, there are some cases in the hospital where you see people doing diet as they should and not lossing weight at all and at the same time they have some autoimmune condition. It wouldn't surprise me to see a true connection found in a couple of years between autoimmune conditions and weight in a reciprocal way.
- Havoc 10y ago
  >couple of years between autoimmune conditions and weight in a reciprocal way. Don't think it'll take that long. Both seem to be connected to messed up gut flora to some extent.
  - eagsalazar2 10y ago
    If that is the case, I wonder what the impact of a fecal transplant from a person who "can eat whatever they want and stay skinny" would be?
    - gingerrr 10y ago
      Since it's already been purported to work the other way (fecal transplant from overweight individual causes rapid weight gain [1]) it may become the next big diet fad. That would be a nice biohack. -- [1]: http://www.bbc.com/news/health-31168511 http://www.bbc.com/news/health-31168511
      - wdewind 10y ago
        Please don't get science news from BBC. This is a sample size of 1, in a person who was probably already eating a ton and not absorbing it much due to a massive infection. There's not a ton we can take from this.
        gingerrr 10y ago
        I did say 'purported', and the BBC is basing their story on an case study from the Oxford Journal for infectious diseases, which was linked in the first paragraph of the article: http://ofid.oxfordjournals.org/content/2/1/ofv004.full http://ofid.oxfordjournals.org/content/2/1/ofv004.full. Since you have an issue with the sample size, please point me to the nearest full-scale fecal transplant study done and I'll gladly use those results. >in a person who was probably already eating a ton and not absorbing it much due to a massive infection. Source? Let's not criticize others for their sources and then make unsupported drive-by claims. edit: "article" --> "case study"
cphoover 10y ago
at first I read this as flag-burning and was so confused
mjevans 10y ago
“Obviously, one possible starting point in combatting obesity could be to inhibit the inflammatory response in abdominal fat while administering cGMP-stimulating active ingredients,” says Prof. Pfeifer to summarize the findings. As someone with body fat predominantly in the torso I would love to benefit from this research.
- BigChiefSmokem 10y ago
  Doesn't look good for the kind of weight-loss consumers would look for. From the article: "While hardly any inflammation occurred in the subcutaneous fat of obese mice and cGMP signaling was largely intact, things were very different for the deeper-lying abdominal fat: through the significant weight increase, inflammation had spread and the fat-burning turbocharger cGMP largely came to a standstill."
- xutopia 10y ago
  I am not a doctor and you should probably speak to one before trying this but there is some information regarding cryolipolysis. Apparently you can get some benefit from bring temperature of body down a few degrees. http://theweek.com/articles/597862/truth-about-freezing-fat http://theweek.com/articles/597862/truth-about-freezing-fat
nirajshr 10y ago
There has been increasing evidence of cold stress and fat loss. My understanding is that cold stress increases the BAT (brown fat) cells, which helps burn fat for energy source. I have been reading the articles in this blog: http://hypothermics.com/ http://hypothermics.com/. It is an excellent blog that chronicles many of the findings and the author performs a lot of these tests on himself.
- mikeleung 10y ago
  Ray Cronise goes through a lot of this stuff in a podcast he did with Dr Rhonda Patrick here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNzZod_d18A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNzZod_d18A
- Raphmedia 10y ago
  Wouldn't that make people living in the northern hemisphere less likely to become fat?
  - rhino369 10y ago
    People don't spend all that much time outside and when they do, they wrap up well enough that you don't get very cold. These hypothetical cold fat burning technqiues, that I've seen, suggest inducing very mild hypothermia (shivering). That only happens rarely in the north.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - Raphmedia 10y ago
      > they wrap up well enough that you don't get very cold. Are you certain of that? It gets really cold here and everyone wears jeans. Only children wear winter pants casually. Sometime the air itself is cold enough to get you shivering. The only time I see people correctly dressed against the cold is when they do winter sports or go hiking in the woods.
  - OldSchoolJohnny 10y ago
ErikAugust 10y ago
Isn't there research that shows that ketosis provides an anti-inflammatory response? Moving into ketosis for fat-loss may be the right thing to do (at least for a period)...
- antidaily 10y ago
  There is. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4124736/#S4title https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4124736/#S4titl... Ive had pretty good success with Keto. Lost weight, have good energy. Check out the keto reddit if you want to try it out. Great resource.
  - treehau5_ 10y ago
    concur on a short term keto diet. I lost basically all my excess body fat. I struggled a little more with the brain fog, buy after doing it for about a month, I was able to get back into healthier habits. I wouldn't recommend it long term unless you have a medical condition that requires it. My nephew had seizures and he switched to ketogenic diet and his epilepsy calmed from multiple episodes a day to maybe one a day.
    - antidaily 10y ago
      Wow. I also have a nephew with a seizure disorder who switched to a keto-like diet(!). Though, he's since changed medications and moved on to something else.
    - johnward 10y ago
      My experience is opposite yours. Mentally I'm much stronger when my brain runs on ketones than sugar.
  - wdewind 10y ago
    This is all interesting, and warrants more actual research, but it's on a rat study that did not control for calories, so it's not super useful because we also know that: 1. Rats metabolisms are very different from primate and specifically human metabolisms 2. Even if they are the same, we already know that eating a caloric surplus contributes to inflammation, so it's difficult to disambiguate the effects of eating keto vs. the effects of eat fewer calories (which people on keto tend to do). Nothing against keto, if it allows you to comply to eating the right amount of food that's great, but controlling for calories there isn't a ton of evidence in its efficacy over carbohydrate inclusive diets.
hbosch 10y ago
As for ways to keep inflammation down, I assume cold baths and aspirin aren't exactly "enough" for noticeable effects at the moment. Are there any more good ways to treat inflammation that would be a good supplement to exercise?
- Apocryphon 10y ago
  Adequate sleep. Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21112025 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21112025
  - drzaiusapelord 10y ago
    There's a strong connection between weight gain and sleep apnea. Often its misunderstood as "Oh just go on a diet and your sleep apnea will go away!" That works in some cases but for many it doesn't. Turns out the SA caused the weight gain via unknown mechanisms. Perhaps inflammation, perhaps sugar/food cravings to make up for lost energy, fatigue, etc.
- gtrubetskoy 10y ago
  Simply (ok it's not so simple, actually) reducing intake of inflammatory food such sugar in any form, preservatives, coloring, glyphosate, animals treated with antibiotics, etc. would go a really long way.
  - wdewind 10y ago
    I'd go even one step further: simply reducing intake of food period. Inflammation, short of a specific disease, is pretty rare in people who are not overweight.
  - xinyhn 10y ago
    Also consider vegetable oils.
- thenobsta 10y ago
  Beyond what gtrubetskoy mentions (those are the basics which one should always follow), fish oil[1] and tumeric[2] have powerful anti-inflammatory effects. [1] http://umm.edu/health/medical/altmed/supplement/omega3-fatty-acids http://umm.edu/health/medical/altmed/supplement/omega3-fatty... [2] http://umm.edu/health/medical/altmed/herb/turmeric http://umm.edu/health/medical/altmed/herb/turmeric
anotherarray 10y ago
This is interestingly related to Dinitrophenol, which is widely used by bodybuilders: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2,4-Dinitrophenol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2,4-Dinitrophenol
- johnward 10y ago
  Does in fact work and any aged used as a weight-loss drug for awhile. Highly toxic so you might die.
mr_spothawk 10y ago
"As the researchers have shown in various studies on mice, the widespread active ingredient sildenafil or a medication against pulmonary hypertension, for instance, can be used to reduce the number of white fat cells to the benefit of the brown fat cells and thus accelerate fat burning like a turbocharger." isn't Sildenafil Viagra??
- cmdrfred 10y ago
  It is indeed.
- evincarofautumn 10y ago
  According to Wikipedia, it was developed to treat hypertension and angina, then the researchers discovered a happy (and very marketable) side effect during trials. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sildenafil#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sildenafil#History
wdewind 10y ago
The problem here is what happens when the inflammation goes down? All that fat that's been stored is still going to be burned as energy assuming one is eating within a caloric balance. It's frustrating to read all this research into the mechanism of what causes fat to be stored short term, because we already know what really causes fat to be stored long term: eating too much. We need to be researching the reward systems associated with eating, and we need to start treating obesity as the mental health issue it is. It's a food addiction, and what we don't need to understand more deeply is how fat is stored. What we do need to understand more deeply is why people eat too much and how to get them to comply to healthier lifestyles. The answers are going to look a lot like drug addiction (ie: people are self-medicating depression, anxiety, etc. with food).
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > All that fat that's been stored is still going to be burned as energy assuming one is eating within a caloric balance. No, if you are eating within caloric balance, the fat will not be burned for energy. > we need to start treating obesity as the mental health issue it is. Obesity is not a "mental health issue". It's a symptom. There may (or may not) be mental health issues underlying it. > It's a food addiction Food addictions are a real thing, and obviously where they exist they can contribute to obesity. It's also clearly the case that obesity is not simply food addiction. > What we do need to understand more deeply is why people eat too much There's a lot of work that has been done on this. > The answers are going to look a lot like drug addiction If you mean "they are going to be very complex sets of environmental, genetic, and physical and mental health factors that combine differently in different people, and that often the most effective interventions will be more indicated by the current state than the root causes in individual history", I'd agree that it will look a lot like drug addiction. In fact, we already know that obesity is, in that respect, like drug addiction, so that's just predicting the present, not future results.
  - wdewind 10y ago
    There are not obese people who do not eat too much. They simply do not exist. Then the question becomes: why do they eat too much? Yes, you are right, it's a complex answer involving a ton of things. But my point in framing it as a food addiction is that the issue here is not that there is some kind of underlying metabolic damage or difference that accounts for obesity, unless that damage/difference somehow contributes to increasing the desire to eat more. If we could somehow get them to simply eat less, the condition would go away. There are arguments to be made about the mind body connection, and I think they are real, but the issues here are not that obese people are eating the same amount of food as non-obese people and that inflammation is causing some of that energy to be stored as fat. It's ridiculous and misleading for people who are genuinely trying to change their lives to suggest that small effects like this are the cause. Also: > No, if you are eating within caloric balance, the fat will not be burned for energy. Fat is constantly being stored and burned as energy even within a caloric balance. You cannot store fat longterm without at some point eating at a caloric surplus.
monksy 10y ago
I wonder how effective it would be from a diet perspective if you were to add things that are anti-inflamitory to your diet. (I.e. Green Tea extract suppliments)
- copperx 10y ago
  Before anyone gets the idea of supplementing NSAIDs (non-steroidal anti-inflammatories such as aspirin), please know that the chronic use of NSAIDs has been found to be related to renal cancer (which is not curable).
  - monksy 10y ago
    The idea of people abusing Asprin scares the crap out of me.

133 points by upen 10y ago

>"if bodyfat can simply be melted away" Hard to believe this kind of fantasy is still being promoted. Burn more calories than you take in. That's it, that's the secret to losing body fat. It's simple thermodynamics.

geoka9 10y ago
Generally true, but there are things to keep in mind (because your body will fight nail and tooth for its fat reserves): 1) You'll be losing muscle before you lose fat 2) You'll be lethargic which can result in no weigth loss because your calorie expenditure will match your (reduced) intake Overcoming these two issues is what most slimming/fitness regiments are about.
- wdewind 10y ago
  1. This can be heavily mitigated by going to the gym, or doing some kind of resistance exercise. Yes, human beings are required to eat the right amount of food and also exercise in order to maintain health. There is no magic bullet. 2. You would only really be lethargic for a small amount of time as your body adjusts to blood sugar levels. It's important to note that people who are losing weight are not low on energy because they are lacking calories. They have a ton of calories, they just aren't very good at using the fat to maintain blood sugar (yet). This should be roughly a 1-4 week transition, and again exercise will help a lot with it.
  - geoka9 10y ago
    > This should be roughly a 1-4 week transition I wish it was that simple. From the studies I've read and personal experience, the human body stops using fat as its source of energy once it goes below certain percentage (the lower the percentage, the harder it is to make it use fat). It's pure muscle catabolism and low levels of energy from there on, unless you use tricks like intermittent fasting and macro cycling (and resistance training).
    - wdewind 10y ago
      Realistically you're talking about like 12% bodyfat for a male - which is something many of us would dream of. Sorry, but that's absolutely not what's happening with regular overweight people who lose weight, you're talking about micro-optimization for athletes. The deal is whenever you lose weight you lose muscle and fat. All you can do is shift the ratio. Resistance exercise helps shift that ratio. Proper diet (ie: enough protein) helps shift that ratio.
- dlsym 10y ago
  No it does not. Lost 50 kg doing CICO. To keep your muscle, watch your macros and exercise. Losing weight is actually pretty simple. But I won't argue that it is hard.
  - geoka9 10y ago
    > Losing weight is actually pretty simple. But I won't argue that it is hard. It depends on the genetics, but yes, if you're really overweight, losing lots of weight is generally pretty simple. At some point, though, you'll hit a roadblock and that's when those nuances can become important.
- MegaDeKay 10y ago
  1) can certainly be influenced by giving your body a reason to hold on to that muscle e.g. weight training. 2) is one of the reasons that coffee exists on this earth :-)
- greenhatman 10y ago
  Yea, there are lots of studies actually looking at the effect of various foods have on fat burning and obesity. There is definitely more at play than simply calories in calories out. Yes, if you want to lose weight, you need to have a calorie deficit, but certain foods promote fat burning, while others do the opposite. Here are just 3 studies, but there are many many more. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24065788 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24065788 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21621801 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21621801 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22854401 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22854401
grzm 10y ago
There are at least two issues with the calories in/ calories burned idea. 1) The method used to measure calories (combustion) is not a proper representation of how calories are metabolized in the human body. We don't have a fire burning inside us. 2) There are different metabolic cycles which determine whether body fat is utilized for energy or whether energy from food is stored as fat. A good reference for this is "Why We Get Fat" by Gary Taubes.
- wdewind 10y ago
  While 1) is true, it's not significantly true. If we are measuring calories consistently, even if we are wrong about it, we can continue to trend downwards until we are losing weight. There isn't such a massive difference that caloric measurement error is to blame. And for 2) this is really not true at all. Yes, you might store fat temporarily etc., but if you are eating a caloric balance, guess what: that fat has to be used at some point. Taubes is not wrong, but he really overemphasizes a lot of things. People who are obese are not eating just a little over caloric balance but eating the wrong things. They are eating massively over caloric balance. Cutting sugar out might be a good way to get them to comply to a diet that requires them to eat fewer calories, but ultimately for the obese it's really just the calories that are an issue. Imo this warrants more research into the psychological aspects of obesity (the food dopamine reward system etc.)
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > People who are obese are not eating just a little over caloric balance but eating the wrong things. Obviously, people who are obese and stable in both weight and fat/lean distribution are eating in caloric balance. You seem to be confusing "obese" with "rapid fat gain", which are two different things.
    - wdewind 10y ago
      My major point, which I don't think you disagree with, is that none of this research is telling us anything useful. What we know is that people need to eat a reasonable amount of calories and they need to exercise. That amount is different for different people in different situations, but it's not due to inflammation, or any of the other tiny factors that vary person to person. If you are eating 2000 calories a day and consistently maintaining weight, and inflammation causes you to store some more of your energy intake as fat at some point, you will also burn that fat off at some point. There's no reason to think that small temporary metabolic shifts within a calorically consistent environment cause long term fat gain.

merqurio 10y ago

This is something under active research, and it might have some true behind, there are some cases in the hospital where you see people doing diet as they should and not lossing weight at all and at the same time they have some autoimmune condition. It wouldn't surprise me to see a true connection found in a couple of years between autoimmune conditions and weight in a reciprocal way.

Havoc 10y ago
>couple of years between autoimmune conditions and weight in a reciprocal way. Don't think it'll take that long. Both seem to be connected to messed up gut flora to some extent.
- eagsalazar2 10y ago
  If that is the case, I wonder what the impact of a fecal transplant from a person who "can eat whatever they want and stay skinny" would be?
  - gingerrr 10y ago
    Since it's already been purported to work the other way (fecal transplant from overweight individual causes rapid weight gain [1]) it may become the next big diet fad. That would be a nice biohack. -- [1]: http://www.bbc.com/news/health-31168511 http://www.bbc.com/news/health-31168511
    - wdewind 10y ago
      Please don't get science news from BBC. This is a sample size of 1, in a person who was probably already eating a ton and not absorbing it much due to a massive infection. There's not a ton we can take from this.
      - gingerrr 10y ago
        I did say 'purported', and the BBC is basing their story on an case study from the Oxford Journal for infectious diseases, which was linked in the first paragraph of the article: http://ofid.oxfordjournals.org/content/2/1/ofv004.full http://ofid.oxfordjournals.org/content/2/1/ofv004.full. Since you have an issue with the sample size, please point me to the nearest full-scale fecal transplant study done and I'll gladly use those results. >in a person who was probably already eating a ton and not absorbing it much due to a massive infection. Source? Let's not criticize others for their sources and then make unsupported drive-by claims. edit: "article" --> "case study"

cphoover 10y ago

at first I read this as flag-burning and was so confused

mjevans 10y ago

“Obviously, one possible starting point in combatting obesity could be to inhibit the inflammatory response in abdominal fat while administering cGMP-stimulating active ingredients,” says Prof. Pfeifer to summarize the findings. As someone with body fat predominantly in the torso I would love to benefit from this research.

BigChiefSmokem 10y ago
Doesn't look good for the kind of weight-loss consumers would look for. From the article: "While hardly any inflammation occurred in the subcutaneous fat of obese mice and cGMP signaling was largely intact, things were very different for the deeper-lying abdominal fat: through the significant weight increase, inflammation had spread and the fat-burning turbocharger cGMP largely came to a standstill."
xutopia 10y ago
I am not a doctor and you should probably speak to one before trying this but there is some information regarding cryolipolysis. Apparently you can get some benefit from bring temperature of body down a few degrees. http://theweek.com/articles/597862/truth-about-freezing-fat http://theweek.com/articles/597862/truth-about-freezing-fat

nirajshr 10y ago

There has been increasing evidence of cold stress and fat loss. My understanding is that cold stress increases the BAT (brown fat) cells, which helps burn fat for energy source. I have been reading the articles in this blog: http://hypothermics.com/ http://hypothermics.com/. It is an excellent blog that chronicles many of the findings and the author performs a lot of these tests on himself.

mikeleung 10y ago
Ray Cronise goes through a lot of this stuff in a podcast he did with Dr Rhonda Patrick here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNzZod_d18A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNzZod_d18A
Raphmedia 10y ago
Wouldn't that make people living in the northern hemisphere less likely to become fat?
- rhino369 10y ago
  People don't spend all that much time outside and when they do, they wrap up well enough that you don't get very cold. These hypothetical cold fat burning technqiues, that I've seen, suggest inducing very mild hypothermia (shivering). That only happens rarely in the north.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - Raphmedia 10y ago
    > they wrap up well enough that you don't get very cold. Are you certain of that? It gets really cold here and everyone wears jeans. Only children wear winter pants casually. Sometime the air itself is cold enough to get you shivering. The only time I see people correctly dressed against the cold is when they do winter sports or go hiking in the woods.
- OldSchoolJohnny 10y ago

ErikAugust 10y ago

Isn't there research that shows that ketosis provides an anti-inflammatory response? Moving into ketosis for fat-loss may be the right thing to do (at least for a period)...

antidaily 10y ago
There is. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4124736/#S4title https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4124736/#S4titl... Ive had pretty good success with Keto. Lost weight, have good energy. Check out the keto reddit if you want to try it out. Great resource.
- treehau5_ 10y ago
  concur on a short term keto diet. I lost basically all my excess body fat. I struggled a little more with the brain fog, buy after doing it for about a month, I was able to get back into healthier habits. I wouldn't recommend it long term unless you have a medical condition that requires it. My nephew had seizures and he switched to ketogenic diet and his epilepsy calmed from multiple episodes a day to maybe one a day.
  - antidaily 10y ago
    Wow. I also have a nephew with a seizure disorder who switched to a keto-like diet(!). Though, he's since changed medications and moved on to something else.
  - johnward 10y ago
    My experience is opposite yours. Mentally I'm much stronger when my brain runs on ketones than sugar.
- wdewind 10y ago
  This is all interesting, and warrants more actual research, but it's on a rat study that did not control for calories, so it's not super useful because we also know that: 1. Rats metabolisms are very different from primate and specifically human metabolisms 2. Even if they are the same, we already know that eating a caloric surplus contributes to inflammation, so it's difficult to disambiguate the effects of eating keto vs. the effects of eat fewer calories (which people on keto tend to do). Nothing against keto, if it allows you to comply to eating the right amount of food that's great, but controlling for calories there isn't a ton of evidence in its efficacy over carbohydrate inclusive diets.

hbosch 10y ago

As for ways to keep inflammation down, I assume cold baths and aspirin aren't exactly "enough" for noticeable effects at the moment. Are there any more good ways to treat inflammation that would be a good supplement to exercise?

Apocryphon 10y ago
Adequate sleep. Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21112025 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21112025
- drzaiusapelord 10y ago
  There's a strong connection between weight gain and sleep apnea. Often its misunderstood as "Oh just go on a diet and your sleep apnea will go away!" That works in some cases but for many it doesn't. Turns out the SA caused the weight gain via unknown mechanisms. Perhaps inflammation, perhaps sugar/food cravings to make up for lost energy, fatigue, etc.
gtrubetskoy 10y ago
Simply (ok it's not so simple, actually) reducing intake of inflammatory food such sugar in any form, preservatives, coloring, glyphosate, animals treated with antibiotics, etc. would go a really long way.
- wdewind 10y ago
  I'd go even one step further: simply reducing intake of food period. Inflammation, short of a specific disease, is pretty rare in people who are not overweight.
- xinyhn 10y ago
  Also consider vegetable oils.
thenobsta 10y ago
Beyond what gtrubetskoy mentions (those are the basics which one should always follow), fish oil[1] and tumeric[2] have powerful anti-inflammatory effects. [1] http://umm.edu/health/medical/altmed/supplement/omega3-fatty-acids http://umm.edu/health/medical/altmed/supplement/omega3-fatty... [2] http://umm.edu/health/medical/altmed/herb/turmeric http://umm.edu/health/medical/altmed/herb/turmeric

anotherarray 10y ago

This is interestingly related to Dinitrophenol, which is widely used by bodybuilders: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2,4-Dinitrophenol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2,4-Dinitrophenol

johnward 10y ago
Does in fact work and any aged used as a weight-loss drug for awhile. Highly toxic so you might die.

mr_spothawk 10y ago

"As the researchers have shown in various studies on mice, the widespread active ingredient sildenafil or a medication against pulmonary hypertension, for instance, can be used to reduce the number of white fat cells to the benefit of the brown fat cells and thus accelerate fat burning like a turbocharger." isn't Sildenafil Viagra??

cmdrfred 10y ago
It is indeed.
evincarofautumn 10y ago
According to Wikipedia, it was developed to treat hypertension and angina, then the researchers discovered a happy (and very marketable) side effect during trials. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sildenafil#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sildenafil#History

wdewind 10y ago

The problem here is what happens when the inflammation goes down? All that fat that's been stored is still going to be burned as energy assuming one is eating within a caloric balance. It's frustrating to read all this research into the mechanism of what causes fat to be stored short term, because we already know what really causes fat to be stored long term: eating too much. We need to be researching the reward systems associated with eating, and we need to start treating obesity as the mental health issue it is. It's a food addiction, and what we don't need to understand more deeply is how fat is stored. What we do need to understand more deeply is why people eat too much and how to get them to comply to healthier lifestyles. The answers are going to look a lot like drug addiction (ie: people are self-medicating depression, anxiety, etc. with food).

dragonwriter 10y ago
> All that fat that's been stored is still going to be burned as energy assuming one is eating within a caloric balance. No, if you are eating within caloric balance, the fat will not be burned for energy. > we need to start treating obesity as the mental health issue it is. Obesity is not a "mental health issue". It's a symptom. There may (or may not) be mental health issues underlying it. > It's a food addiction Food addictions are a real thing, and obviously where they exist they can contribute to obesity. It's also clearly the case that obesity is not simply food addiction. > What we do need to understand more deeply is why people eat too much There's a lot of work that has been done on this. > The answers are going to look a lot like drug addiction If you mean "they are going to be very complex sets of environmental, genetic, and physical and mental health factors that combine differently in different people, and that often the most effective interventions will be more indicated by the current state than the root causes in individual history", I'd agree that it will look a lot like drug addiction. In fact, we already know that obesity is, in that respect, like drug addiction, so that's just predicting the present, not future results.
- wdewind 10y ago
  There are not obese people who do not eat too much. They simply do not exist. Then the question becomes: why do they eat too much? Yes, you are right, it's a complex answer involving a ton of things. But my point in framing it as a food addiction is that the issue here is not that there is some kind of underlying metabolic damage or difference that accounts for obesity, unless that damage/difference somehow contributes to increasing the desire to eat more. If we could somehow get them to simply eat less, the condition would go away. There are arguments to be made about the mind body connection, and I think they are real, but the issues here are not that obese people are eating the same amount of food as non-obese people and that inflammation is causing some of that energy to be stored as fat. It's ridiculous and misleading for people who are genuinely trying to change their lives to suggest that small effects like this are the cause. Also: > No, if you are eating within caloric balance, the fat will not be burned for energy. Fat is constantly being stored and burned as energy even within a caloric balance. You cannot store fat longterm without at some point eating at a caloric surplus.

monksy 10y ago

I wonder how effective it would be from a diet perspective if you were to add things that are anti-inflamitory to your diet. (I.e. Green Tea extract suppliments)

copperx 10y ago
Before anyone gets the idea of supplementing NSAIDs (non-steroidal anti-inflammatories such as aspirin), please know that the chronic use of NSAIDs has been found to be related to renal cancer (which is not curable).
- monksy 10y ago
  The idea of people abusing Asprin scares the crap out of me.