8 ms·

This article has a huge flaw: it only talks about glucose metabolism but completely ignores the fat metabolism. For reference: fat metabolism is equally import

This article has a huge flaw: it only talks about glucose metabolism but completely ignores the fat metabolism. For reference: fat metabolism is equally important, or maybe even more important than the glucose part of it. It should not be ignored, it should be taught. Otherwise a reader may get a wrong impression that glucose is _the_ energy and then will go to a shop to grab the usual candy, thinking that sugar + oxygen is what makes cellular ATP. But this is only one half of the story. The full formula is: sugar + fat + oxygen = energy But there is a trick. Sugar suppresses fat metabolism and vice versa. This suggests that eating sugar + fat is a bad idea, and it is. But what the average Joe does not know is that: fat + oxygen = even more energy For example, 1 molecule of glucose leads to production of 32 ATP molecules, while one fatty acid molecule produces 48 ATP molecules. ATP is the energy currency in our bodies, so the more we have it the more healthy and energetic we can be. The catch with fats is that they are slow to get going. Glucose action is instant while the fats need tens of minutes to be engaged in energy production. Another catch is that fats can be relatively easily damaged rendering them unhealthy. For example, the production of refined vegetable oils uses high temperatures to "squeeze" the oil out of the seeds. This process inevitably damages long chain fatty acids breaking them into shorter pieces and oxidizing them along the way. Such trans fats cannot be consumed by our bodies: their chains are too short to be correctly processed and are too big to pass the mitochondrial membranes. This will gradually lead to a metabolic dysfunction while filling the cells with unprocessable "junk". But if you consume high-quality fats as a part of a daily low-carbohydrate diet it makes miracles: no belly, better cognition and you don't need so much food anymore. For example, the following products are considered as the sources of high-quality fats: avocado, fatty fish, extra virgin oils, nuts, European round cheese. The thing is that people don't know this until they hit a health condition that makes them vulnerable and sensitive. We live our lives eating tons of sugar and thinking that this is the right diet because "sugar = energy", but it is not. Articles like this fuel this wrong impression. As the result, we gradually loose our metabolic flexibility and may become seriously sick at some point of our life.

germinalphrase 4y ago
“European round cheese” This is… vague. What are the qualities of a cheese that make it shift into the ‘high quality fats’ category?
- garganzol 4y ago
  Probably the best bet: naturally produced products without using hydrogenation and too much heat. From the formal standpoint a high-quality fat product should not contain trans fats or contain just a small amount of them.
  - germinalphrase 4y ago
    Sure: but neither “European” nor “round” provide a heuristic for identifying those qualities. Edit: to expand, a quick look in my fridge shows the following cheese have no trans fats at all. - Tillamook’s widely available industrial cheddar - Generic brand feta - Generic low-moisture cheddar - Dutch Gouda We should probably eat good cheese because it tastes better, but I would imagine that trans fat free cheese would encapsulate most common cheese varieties.
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      As an FYI, added trans fats have been illegal in the US since a few years ago: https://www.fda.gov/food/food-additives-petitions/trans-fat https://www.fda.gov/food/food-additives-petitions/trans-fat
  - rootusrootus 4y ago
    Kraft singles have no trans fat.
    - deeblering4 4y ago
      Neither does plastic
      - rootusrootus 4y ago
        I find that bringing up American cheese is the single fastest way to establish whether someone knows anything about food or not. It's an excellent filter.
tejohnso 4y ago
> We live our lives eating tons of sugar and thinking that this is the right diet I don't think most people think it's the right diet. I think most people know that sugar is potentially harmful. Nobody is espousing the idea that sugar is part of a balanced diet, or that we should be increasing the amount of added sugar in processed foods. Or that we should increase our consumption of candy. Rather, when we think of sugar, we think of obesity, heart disease, diabetes. Maybe even fructose toxicity?
- jjuel 4y ago
  But highly processed refined carbohydrates are sugar as well. Or at least converted to glucose. We are told, however, that carbs are part of the balanced diet. While that is true the right kind of carbs are important. So people think they are being healthy while loading themselves up with poor quality carbs that are in fact quite unhealthy.
  - quietbritishjim 4y ago
    > We are told, however, that carbs are part of the balanced diet. While that is true the right kind of carbs are important. So people think they are being healthy while loading themselves up with poor quality carbs that are in fact quite unhealthy. I have never heard anyone, even informally, claiming that sugars are a useful form of carbs in the diet. Any source that claims that carbs should be part of a balanced diet is talking about long-chain carbs like starch, not sugar. I highly doubt many people are seeing carbs listed as an important part of a diet and then deliberately eating more sugar thinking that they are being healthy.
    - zamfi 4y ago
      I think th e poster you are responding to is making the point that long-chain refined carbs, which is what you get in e.g. pasta, breakfast cereal, oatmeal, rice, etc. (even if “whole grain”, most of which just adds back fiber but has already irreversible separated that fiber from the carbs) are perceived by many people as part of a balanced diet, etc — but they are basically sugar, because they are metabolized into glucose very quickly.
feet 4y ago
I have a few clarifying questions: What else are fatty acids used for? What are the metabolic pathways involved and how do different fatty acids impact our cells? Can you cite sources for your claims? Research is a passion of mine and I would love to read some literature on the topic if you have any to share.
- garganzol 4y ago
  > What else are fatty acids used for? Energy storage, hormone synthesis. > What are the metabolic pathways involved and how do different fatty acids impact our cells? Triglycerides are used as a substrate for energy production by mitochondria. Short-chain fatty acids with chain lengths < 22 can readily enter mitochondria and be turned into energy. Long-chain fatty acids cannot enter mitochondria; but they can be shortened by peroxisomes, another cellular organelles, to more feasible lengths which then can enter mitochondria. This whole "fatty" metabolic pathway is called beta-oxidation. Both glucose and lipids are transformed into substance called Acetyl-CoA which is then used by mitochondria to produce ATP. Acetyl-CoA is a common denominator of our energy production pathways. We can also imagine a software pattern when there is a main implementation (mitochondria working internally from Acetyl-CoA) and two adapters for glucose -> Acetyl-CoA (glycolysis) and lipids -> Acetyl-CoA (beta-oxidation) to simplify the whole thing. Trans fats cannot be processed neither by mitochondria nor peroxisomes because they belong to a different class of fatty acids. This causes their accumulation inside the cell and a gradual development of a metabolic dysfunction because mitochondria cannot produce enough ATP (energy) from trans fats. If the accumulation is large enough it starts to block other metabolic pathways including glucose pathway. The mitochondrial "hunger" increases even more. Because glucose cannot enter mitochondria anymore, its level is rising leading to a condition known as insulin resistance. What happens next? A person may develop quite a few secondary conditions such as T2DM, hyperlipidemia, neurological and cognitive impairment, various cardiovascular and autoimmune diseases. > Can you cite sources for your claims? Research is a passion of mine and I would love to read some literature on the topic if you have any to share. I would gladly do that, but the list would be enormous. Materials on Krebs cycle are probably the best starting points. The next important milestone is to read information about Beriberi and Pellagra diseases because those conditions are caused by mitochondrial dysfunction which in turn is caused by nutritional deficiencies. The next thing to study is that metabolic dysfunction can be acquired not only from nutritional deficiencies but from a condition known as oxidative stress, which in turn can be caused by viruses, bacteria, poisons and so on. It can be acquired from the pathological excess of sugar during 10-20 years. Metabolic dysfunction can also be caused by genetics because some enzymes in metabolic pathways do not work as they should. To get a grasp of that, you can watch "Lorenzo's Oil" movie to see how it happens and what kind of sufferings a person may have. As you can see, the amount of materials is quite enormous and hardly fits into a web-page-with-links format.
curmudgeon22 4y ago
Very interesting and thanks for the post. Any recommendations on good places for further reading on the subject?
- garganzol 4y ago
  I would suggest to take a look at Dr. Berg's videos on YouTube. He has very down-to-Earth and highly educational presentations on this and related topics.
arthurofbabylon 4y ago
The article was about metabolism, not diet and food. It didn’t deal so much with what people eat, but instead how cells process energy. The dynamics presented in the article are relevant whether you’re eating a high-fat or high-sugar diet.
- garganzol 4y ago
  The article says that "glucose" is the fuel for mitochondria, which is true. But the article does not say that "lipids" are the fuel for mitochondria as well while it should have. Such asymmetry of presentation may create a dangerous illusion about the glucose as the ultimate nutritional fuel. That illusion may affect nutritional choices of a reader because the article painted glucose as the supposedly purest source of energy.
  - fluoridation 4y ago
    I may be misremembering, but doesn't fat have to be processed into glycogen in the liver before being available for metabolic consumption?
    - quickthrower2 4y ago
      All this information should be included too! Obviously there is a limit to the article scope but it wouldn’t harm to answer these obvious questions it leaves dangling.
    - garganzol 4y ago
      No, fats that come from the food (triglycerides) are directly consumable by the cells.
      - fluoridation 4y ago
        That can't be right. Triglycerides are the bulk of body fat. Now, presumably if you eat fatty tissue the triglycerides in the food will be broken down by enzymes into simpler molecules that can be absorbed by the intestinal walls, and perhaps those molecules may be directly usable. Is that what you mean? If so, then do you know what triglycerides break down into?
maxk42 4y ago
Forgive me for the incomplete reply, but I looked this up last week and one molecule of fatty acid (in this case DHA soecifically) generates 136 molecules of ATP. This makes fat roughly 2x as energetic (from the standpoint of our bodies' metabolism) as the heat measured from burning it (calories) would suggest. Despite this fact, and the fact that I've been eating roughly 3500 calories per day without exercising, switching to a high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet has lead me to lose 10 lbs over the past three weeks. Clearly there's a lot more to metabolism than is even documented in this lengthy article.
- feet 4y ago
  Fatty acids are used for far more than just energy
  - freedude 4y ago
    Yes, brain growth and learning/remembering stuff for instance.
    - feet 4y ago
      I'm talking about specific biochemical mechanisms such as modifying membrane fluidity and getting attached to proteins in post translational modification
anthomtb 4y ago
The average person doesn't think "sugar = energy". They think "sugar = tastes good". When average Joe with his 20 kilo spare tire is hungry (or probably just bored if he's a Western office worker) and trying to satiate himself with either a small bag of almonds or a Milky Way, his subconscious is going to reach for that candy bar every time. Even having learned the good knowledge you describe, the little 5 year old voice that says "I want it!" is going to overrule the adult brain that should know better. I spent a summer working* a Dairy Queen in high school. EVERY SINGLE DAY someone, usually obese, would come in, order an extra large blizzard and say "I really shouldn't do this..." while receiving their paper cup of crack. It is good that you have knowledge and numbers to help you make better choices about your diet. It is unfortunate that knowledge and numbers don't drive better food choices for everyone. *I wasn't really employed there, my buddy managed the place and I'd hang out and occasionally work the register while he smoked a joint out back.
infinite8s 4y ago
> Such trans fats cannot be consumed by our bodies: their chains are too short to be correctly processed and are too big to pass the mitochondrial membranes. Oxidizing lipids doesn't introduce chain rotation about their double bonds (which is the difference between cis and trans fats). This change in structure is why trans fats are solid at higher temperature (for the same types of lipids - think the difference between margarine and vegetable oil). The reason trans fats are bad is we can't process them as easily and they seems to accumulate faster than even saturated fats in our blood vessels, mostly because they are synthetic in nature and we don't have specific enzymes optimized to process them.
- qvrjuec 4y ago
  > they are synthetic in nature There are natural sources of trans fats, like vaccenic acid in breast milk.
leobg 4y ago
Very interesting. Two questions: 1. If you could only have three things in your fridge, which would it be? 2. If you and I could never talk again, what single book, article or video would you recommend for me to turn to in order to find my own way through this topic? Thanks.
- garganzol 4y ago
  > If you could only have three things in your fridge, which would it be? It's a matter of personal taste, but for me it would be: avocado, high-quality cheese, high-quality meat. > If you and I could never talk again, what single book, article or video would you recommend for me to turn to in order to find my own way through this topic? Book: "Thiamine Deficiency Disease, Dysautonomia, and High Calorie Malnutrition" by D. Longsdale and C. Marrs. Video: [1] The materials present information with the focus on specific vitamins, but the knowledge about metabolism is universal and can be applied to all similar situations. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuIhjlFYYZY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuIhjlFYYZY
frankus 4y ago
Is there anything to the idea that saturated fats are less prone to blocking glucose metabolism? For example, this guy [1] argues that saturated fats can temporarily suppress insulin signaling to avoid overloading the cell with glucose while the fat is being metabolized. Anecdotally I have a much easier time handling carb-rich meals since mostly eliminating polyunsaturated fats from my diet. My previous experience was some combination of “food coma” and “noticeably hangry” a few hours later, but now I mostly just feel energetic for a few hours. Some of the most metabolically-healthy populations in the world eat mostly starches [2] (and maybe 1–2% of calories from PUFAs), so my hunch is that eating low-carb is more of a workaround for widespread metabolic dysfunction than a requirement to be metabolically healthy. [1] https://fireinabottle.net/the-ros-theory-of-obesity/ https://fireinabottle.net/the-ros-theory-of-obesity/ [2] https://fireinabottle.net/pontzers-burn-and-metabolic-rate-mechanisms/ https://fireinabottle.net/pontzers-burn-and-metabolic-rate-m... (It’s worth pointing out that both of these links are from a site that also sells supplements, but they do link back to the primary sources)
- garganzol 4y ago
  Exactly. The idea is to remain metabolically flexible. At the same time, a large part of modern population consume too much carbohydrates ignoring the fat thing altogether. Within 10 or 20 years of such diet, the glycolysis metabolic pathway often gets broken causing insulin resistance. But it's not only sugar excess that makes that damage, primarily it's the lack of nutrients in processed foods that causes a gradual mitochondrial decline. For instance, most people consume white sugar because it's cheaper. On the other hand, sugarcane consists of the same glucose + fructose combo as the white sugar but it also contains vitamins, giving us much better chances to remain healthy. Fats still have some uber-abilities compared to the glucose though. The main one is the ability to "shortcut" the faulty metabolic pathways. I will give an example. When glucose pathway is broken in a cell, it leads to inability to produce enough Acetyl-CoA in the given cell. Acetyl-CoA is an intermediate substance that is used by mitochondria to produce the ATP. When there is not enough Acetyl-CoA, the ATP output levels drop, causing detrimental effects on health and general well-being. Such cells start starving, degrade and eventually die. When beta-oxidation pathway is broken, it leads to nearly the same defect, but this time for fats. However, if a person still has at least some number of cells that can do beta-oxidation correctly, those cells can "share" their Acetyl-CoA with other cells through the blood stream. This happens mainly in the liver thanks to the fact that the fats are so powerful that they cause a huge abundance of Acetyl-CoA. And that excess finds its way from the liver cells' mitochondria into the bloodstream, feeding other cells by "shortcutting" their broken glycolysis/beta-oxidation pathways. The excess Acetyl-CoA from liver gets delivered to every single cell in the body, including the brain cells. Even if a specific cell has subpar beta-oxidation or glycolysis abilities, it still can consume the external Acetyl-CoA without any problem and produce the adequate amounts of energy from it to keep the cell healthy. That's why a low-carb high-fat ketogenic diet has so tremendous effect on some health conditions - it allows to "shortcut" the subpar metabolic pathways in affected cells allowing them to survive and even heal over time. This is a natural cycle of the body and suppressing it with a sugar too often will cause serious problems over time. Regarding high-carb low-fat diets: probably they can work given enough nutrients (minerals and vitamins) quite well, probably stretching those 10-20 years of adequate glucose metabolism well into 60-80 years. But still, you better be doing some fasting (or keto) to heal the accumulated damage, at least several times a year. The obesity is a factor but it is not the cause. For example, Asian people may appear thinner than Westerners, but they are ridden by beriberi more often. (Beriberi is a metabolic condition that is caused by mitochondrial damage due to the lack of vitamins) Regarding what blocks what it's a complex question. Glucose metabolism blocks lipid metabolism and vice versa for sure, but I have no specific data. From my own observations, glucose is much more potent in blocking the fatty metabolism than the other way around.

germinalphrase 4y ago

“European round cheese” This is… vague. What are the qualities of a cheese that make it shift into the ‘high quality fats’ category?

garganzol 4y ago
Probably the best bet: naturally produced products without using hydrogenation and too much heat. From the formal standpoint a high-quality fat product should not contain trans fats or contain just a small amount of them.
- germinalphrase 4y ago
  Sure: but neither “European” nor “round” provide a heuristic for identifying those qualities. Edit: to expand, a quick look in my fridge shows the following cheese have no trans fats at all. - Tillamook’s widely available industrial cheddar - Generic brand feta - Generic low-moisture cheddar - Dutch Gouda We should probably eat good cheese because it tastes better, but I would imagine that trans fat free cheese would encapsulate most common cheese varieties.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    As an FYI, added trans fats have been illegal in the US since a few years ago: https://www.fda.gov/food/food-additives-petitions/trans-fat https://www.fda.gov/food/food-additives-petitions/trans-fat
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  Kraft singles have no trans fat.
  - deeblering4 4y ago
    Neither does plastic
    - rootusrootus 4y ago
      I find that bringing up American cheese is the single fastest way to establish whether someone knows anything about food or not. It's an excellent filter.

tejohnso 4y ago

> We live our lives eating tons of sugar and thinking that this is the right diet I don't think most people think it's the right diet. I think most people know that sugar is potentially harmful. Nobody is espousing the idea that sugar is part of a balanced diet, or that we should be increasing the amount of added sugar in processed foods. Or that we should increase our consumption of candy. Rather, when we think of sugar, we think of obesity, heart disease, diabetes. Maybe even fructose toxicity?

jjuel 4y ago
But highly processed refined carbohydrates are sugar as well. Or at least converted to glucose. We are told, however, that carbs are part of the balanced diet. While that is true the right kind of carbs are important. So people think they are being healthy while loading themselves up with poor quality carbs that are in fact quite unhealthy.
- quietbritishjim 4y ago
  > We are told, however, that carbs are part of the balanced diet. While that is true the right kind of carbs are important. So people think they are being healthy while loading themselves up with poor quality carbs that are in fact quite unhealthy. I have never heard anyone, even informally, claiming that sugars are a useful form of carbs in the diet. Any source that claims that carbs should be part of a balanced diet is talking about long-chain carbs like starch, not sugar. I highly doubt many people are seeing carbs listed as an important part of a diet and then deliberately eating more sugar thinking that they are being healthy.
  - zamfi 4y ago
    I think th e poster you are responding to is making the point that long-chain refined carbs, which is what you get in e.g. pasta, breakfast cereal, oatmeal, rice, etc. (even if “whole grain”, most of which just adds back fiber but has already irreversible separated that fiber from the carbs) are perceived by many people as part of a balanced diet, etc — but they are basically sugar, because they are metabolized into glucose very quickly.

feet 4y ago

I have a few clarifying questions: What else are fatty acids used for? What are the metabolic pathways involved and how do different fatty acids impact our cells? Can you cite sources for your claims? Research is a passion of mine and I would love to read some literature on the topic if you have any to share.

garganzol 4y ago
> What else are fatty acids used for? Energy storage, hormone synthesis. > What are the metabolic pathways involved and how do different fatty acids impact our cells? Triglycerides are used as a substrate for energy production by mitochondria. Short-chain fatty acids with chain lengths < 22 can readily enter mitochondria and be turned into energy. Long-chain fatty acids cannot enter mitochondria; but they can be shortened by peroxisomes, another cellular organelles, to more feasible lengths which then can enter mitochondria. This whole "fatty" metabolic pathway is called beta-oxidation. Both glucose and lipids are transformed into substance called Acetyl-CoA which is then used by mitochondria to produce ATP. Acetyl-CoA is a common denominator of our energy production pathways. We can also imagine a software pattern when there is a main implementation (mitochondria working internally from Acetyl-CoA) and two adapters for glucose -> Acetyl-CoA (glycolysis) and lipids -> Acetyl-CoA (beta-oxidation) to simplify the whole thing. Trans fats cannot be processed neither by mitochondria nor peroxisomes because they belong to a different class of fatty acids. This causes their accumulation inside the cell and a gradual development of a metabolic dysfunction because mitochondria cannot produce enough ATP (energy) from trans fats. If the accumulation is large enough it starts to block other metabolic pathways including glucose pathway. The mitochondrial "hunger" increases even more. Because glucose cannot enter mitochondria anymore, its level is rising leading to a condition known as insulin resistance. What happens next? A person may develop quite a few secondary conditions such as T2DM, hyperlipidemia, neurological and cognitive impairment, various cardiovascular and autoimmune diseases. > Can you cite sources for your claims? Research is a passion of mine and I would love to read some literature on the topic if you have any to share. I would gladly do that, but the list would be enormous. Materials on Krebs cycle are probably the best starting points. The next important milestone is to read information about Beriberi and Pellagra diseases because those conditions are caused by mitochondrial dysfunction which in turn is caused by nutritional deficiencies. The next thing to study is that metabolic dysfunction can be acquired not only from nutritional deficiencies but from a condition known as oxidative stress, which in turn can be caused by viruses, bacteria, poisons and so on. It can be acquired from the pathological excess of sugar during 10-20 years. Metabolic dysfunction can also be caused by genetics because some enzymes in metabolic pathways do not work as they should. To get a grasp of that, you can watch "Lorenzo's Oil" movie to see how it happens and what kind of sufferings a person may have. As you can see, the amount of materials is quite enormous and hardly fits into a web-page-with-links format.

curmudgeon22 4y ago

Very interesting and thanks for the post. Any recommendations on good places for further reading on the subject?

garganzol 4y ago
I would suggest to take a look at Dr. Berg's videos on YouTube. He has very down-to-Earth and highly educational presentations on this and related topics.

arthurofbabylon 4y ago

The article was about metabolism, not diet and food. It didn’t deal so much with what people eat, but instead how cells process energy. The dynamics presented in the article are relevant whether you’re eating a high-fat or high-sugar diet.

garganzol 4y ago
The article says that "glucose" is the fuel for mitochondria, which is true. But the article does not say that "lipids" are the fuel for mitochondria as well while it should have. Such asymmetry of presentation may create a dangerous illusion about the glucose as the ultimate nutritional fuel. That illusion may affect nutritional choices of a reader because the article painted glucose as the supposedly purest source of energy.
- fluoridation 4y ago
  I may be misremembering, but doesn't fat have to be processed into glycogen in the liver before being available for metabolic consumption?
  - quickthrower2 4y ago
    All this information should be included too! Obviously there is a limit to the article scope but it wouldn’t harm to answer these obvious questions it leaves dangling.
  - garganzol 4y ago
    No, fats that come from the food (triglycerides) are directly consumable by the cells.
    - fluoridation 4y ago
      That can't be right. Triglycerides are the bulk of body fat. Now, presumably if you eat fatty tissue the triglycerides in the food will be broken down by enzymes into simpler molecules that can be absorbed by the intestinal walls, and perhaps those molecules may be directly usable. Is that what you mean? If so, then do you know what triglycerides break down into?

maxk42 4y ago

Forgive me for the incomplete reply, but I looked this up last week and one molecule of fatty acid (in this case DHA soecifically) generates 136 molecules of ATP. This makes fat roughly 2x as energetic (from the standpoint of our bodies' metabolism) as the heat measured from burning it (calories) would suggest. Despite this fact, and the fact that I've been eating roughly 3500 calories per day without exercising, switching to a high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet has lead me to lose 10 lbs over the past three weeks. Clearly there's a lot more to metabolism than is even documented in this lengthy article.

feet 4y ago
Fatty acids are used for far more than just energy
- freedude 4y ago
  Yes, brain growth and learning/remembering stuff for instance.
  - feet 4y ago
    I'm talking about specific biochemical mechanisms such as modifying membrane fluidity and getting attached to proteins in post translational modification

anthomtb 4y ago

The average person doesn't think "sugar = energy". They think "sugar = tastes good". When average Joe with his 20 kilo spare tire is hungry (or probably just bored if he's a Western office worker) and trying to satiate himself with either a small bag of almonds or a Milky Way, his subconscious is going to reach for that candy bar every time. Even having learned the good knowledge you describe, the little 5 year old voice that says "I want it!" is going to overrule the adult brain that should know better. I spent a summer working* a Dairy Queen in high school. EVERY SINGLE DAY someone, usually obese, would come in, order an extra large blizzard and say "I really shouldn't do this..." while receiving their paper cup of crack. It is good that you have knowledge and numbers to help you make better choices about your diet. It is unfortunate that knowledge and numbers don't drive better food choices for everyone. *I wasn't really employed there, my buddy managed the place and I'd hang out and occasionally work the register while he smoked a joint out back.

infinite8s 4y ago

> Such trans fats cannot be consumed by our bodies: their chains are too short to be correctly processed and are too big to pass the mitochondrial membranes. Oxidizing lipids doesn't introduce chain rotation about their double bonds (which is the difference between cis and trans fats). This change in structure is why trans fats are solid at higher temperature (for the same types of lipids - think the difference between margarine and vegetable oil). The reason trans fats are bad is we can't process them as easily and they seems to accumulate faster than even saturated fats in our blood vessels, mostly because they are synthetic in nature and we don't have specific enzymes optimized to process them.

qvrjuec 4y ago
> they are synthetic in nature There are natural sources of trans fats, like vaccenic acid in breast milk.

leobg 4y ago

Very interesting. Two questions: 1. If you could only have three things in your fridge, which would it be? 2. If you and I could never talk again, what single book, article or video would you recommend for me to turn to in order to find my own way through this topic? Thanks.

garganzol 4y ago
> If you could only have three things in your fridge, which would it be? It's a matter of personal taste, but for me it would be: avocado, high-quality cheese, high-quality meat. > If you and I could never talk again, what single book, article or video would you recommend for me to turn to in order to find my own way through this topic? Book: "Thiamine Deficiency Disease, Dysautonomia, and High Calorie Malnutrition" by D. Longsdale and C. Marrs. Video: [1] The materials present information with the focus on specific vitamins, but the knowledge about metabolism is universal and can be applied to all similar situations. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuIhjlFYYZY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuIhjlFYYZY

frankus 4y ago

Is there anything to the idea that saturated fats are less prone to blocking glucose metabolism? For example, this guy [1] argues that saturated fats can temporarily suppress insulin signaling to avoid overloading the cell with glucose while the fat is being metabolized. Anecdotally I have a much easier time handling carb-rich meals since mostly eliminating polyunsaturated fats from my diet. My previous experience was some combination of “food coma” and “noticeably hangry” a few hours later, but now I mostly just feel energetic for a few hours. Some of the most metabolically-healthy populations in the world eat mostly starches [2] (and maybe 1–2% of calories from PUFAs), so my hunch is that eating low-carb is more of a workaround for widespread metabolic dysfunction than a requirement to be metabolically healthy. [1] https://fireinabottle.net/the-ros-theory-of-obesity/ https://fireinabottle.net/the-ros-theory-of-obesity/ [2] https://fireinabottle.net/pontzers-burn-and-metabolic-rate-mechanisms/ https://fireinabottle.net/pontzers-burn-and-metabolic-rate-m... (It’s worth pointing out that both of these links are from a site that also sells supplements, but they do link back to the primary sources)

garganzol 4y ago
Exactly. The idea is to remain metabolically flexible. At the same time, a large part of modern population consume too much carbohydrates ignoring the fat thing altogether. Within 10 or 20 years of such diet, the glycolysis metabolic pathway often gets broken causing insulin resistance. But it's not only sugar excess that makes that damage, primarily it's the lack of nutrients in processed foods that causes a gradual mitochondrial decline. For instance, most people consume white sugar because it's cheaper. On the other hand, sugarcane consists of the same glucose + fructose combo as the white sugar but it also contains vitamins, giving us much better chances to remain healthy. Fats still have some uber-abilities compared to the glucose though. The main one is the ability to "shortcut" the faulty metabolic pathways. I will give an example. When glucose pathway is broken in a cell, it leads to inability to produce enough Acetyl-CoA in the given cell. Acetyl-CoA is an intermediate substance that is used by mitochondria to produce the ATP. When there is not enough Acetyl-CoA, the ATP output levels drop, causing detrimental effects on health and general well-being. Such cells start starving, degrade and eventually die. When beta-oxidation pathway is broken, it leads to nearly the same defect, but this time for fats. However, if a person still has at least some number of cells that can do beta-oxidation correctly, those cells can "share" their Acetyl-CoA with other cells through the blood stream. This happens mainly in the liver thanks to the fact that the fats are so powerful that they cause a huge abundance of Acetyl-CoA. And that excess finds its way from the liver cells' mitochondria into the bloodstream, feeding other cells by "shortcutting" their broken glycolysis/beta-oxidation pathways. The excess Acetyl-CoA from liver gets delivered to every single cell in the body, including the brain cells. Even if a specific cell has subpar beta-oxidation or glycolysis abilities, it still can consume the external Acetyl-CoA without any problem and produce the adequate amounts of energy from it to keep the cell healthy. That's why a low-carb high-fat ketogenic diet has so tremendous effect on some health conditions - it allows to "shortcut" the subpar metabolic pathways in affected cells allowing them to survive and even heal over time. This is a natural cycle of the body and suppressing it with a sugar too often will cause serious problems over time. Regarding high-carb low-fat diets: probably they can work given enough nutrients (minerals and vitamins) quite well, probably stretching those 10-20 years of adequate glucose metabolism well into 60-80 years. But still, you better be doing some fasting (or keto) to heal the accumulated damage, at least several times a year. The obesity is a factor but it is not the cause. For example, Asian people may appear thinner than Westerners, but they are ridden by beriberi more often. (Beriberi is a metabolic condition that is caused by mitochondrial damage due to the lack of vitamins) Regarding what blocks what it's a complex question. Glucose metabolism blocks lipid metabolism and vice versa for sure, but I have no specific data. From my own observations, glucose is much more potent in blocking the fatty metabolism than the other way around.