Muscling Your Metabolism (Part 1)

As I sat on my back porch early one morning in October, 2008, there was no way for me to realize how this one crazy moment would completely change my life.  Over the weekend, I attended a meeting in Philadelphia and on the last night proclaimed to a friend that I was about to do the most odd experiment in my life.  I wanted to get to the bottom of “metabolism” and “burning calories.”  I wanted to understand why it seemed so difficult to lose a couple of pounds and yet I could easily GAIN a couple in a weekend.

So on the first day of this self experiment, I was sitting in shorts with no shoes, shirt, or hat.  I wondered what was it like to be cold? I wanted to see how far I could go.  That morning it was 33F/0.5C and the following week (an unseasonable chill for the area) it ranged from 32F/0C-41F/5C. So many things about all of this were fortuitous and not planned.  My goal was simple question:

Why do I get cold and what causes me to reach the point where I must seek warmth?

For the first time in my life, I was shivering uncontrollably. I don’t think I’d ever REALLY shivered before. I started writing down symptoms and sensations. I remember at one point my already illegible scribble in my notebook becoming even more unrecognizable and I put the notebook and pen down. Closing my eyes I could feel pain in my feet and hands.  My ears, nose and face burned and shivering got a little more aggressive. At first, I could close my eyes and will my shivering away for 10-20 seconds. At some point that no longer worked. My scalp tighten and I felt all the blood struggling to stay in my limbs.

I can’t remember if it was my ears, feet, hand, or face that finally made me call it quits, but I do remember walking in on very numb feet, barely able to open the door and deciding a warm shower was in order.  Even as my hand went under the first cold water that came out of the shower head, it was burning warm.  The shower faucet was the type that had the temperature preset and there was no WAY I was taking a shower at the normally adjusted temperature – it was entirely too hot. These perceptions of change are something we are all too fast to forget; There are a range of environments we can survive and our body doesn’t sense absolutes, but is driven by change.

What I’ve learned since makes me look back and laugh a bit at how extreme I perceived that morning to be, but not because I didn’t really experience the agony. This isn’t just a melodramatic, reminiscent account – it happened as severely as I remember it. What I have learned is just how adaptable the Human body is to the world around us. As machines go we are INCREDIBLY adaptable.  Our simple, one-dimensional explanations of what we might in one moment experience or perceive are often skewed from what we are really capable of doing.

I was  just as wrong about my ideas of metabolism back then and I would argue that many physicians, nutritionists,  and fitness experts fall into the same trap.  What sets me apart now is that I am measuring metabolism weekly in range of conditions and people and it’s opened up my eyes to an entirely new world.

The Beginning

I’ve been reading/collecting/studying physiology, nutrition, and metabolism textbooks from the late 18th century to the early 19th century.  The work that was completed during this period is spectacular. What began with the Enlightenment and persisted through the Industrial Revolution was a very profound shift in how we viewed our bodies. Although there had been exploration of what we now calle metabolism going all the way back to Hippocrates (460 BC-370 BC), the progress we made during this ~125 years was simply astounding.

It’s important as one reads these classic papers and textbooks to somewhat immerse in their world.  It’s easy to see the debate of the time and it’s interesting to look back with the same clarity that  I now reflect on my first cold experiment, and know who’s right and who’s wrong.  When we look back 100 years from now, what do you think we’ll find?  We didn’t drink enough sodas or protein shakes? We didn’t take enough supplements? Where do we get our “protein” anyway? Was everyone allergic to wheat gluten?

Whether it’s the work of Becher, Lavoisier, or Atwater, there are so many hypotheses we know to be true today, but were highly debated when introduced. Yet, curiosity and perseverance caused these free-thinkers to press forward and conduct experiments and collect supporting data. They challenged status quo and it didn’t always make them popular.

For example, nearly a century past with the world’s greatest scientists all knowing that the reason things burned was due to the “phlogiston” contained within the substance.(1) These “phlogisticated” substances were “dephlogisticated” when burned. The air only had a limited amount of phlogiston it could absorb. Whether it was a candle or a Guinea pig in a sealed container, soon the air was no longer capable of absorbing any more phlogiston and the life, like the candle, was extinguished.  We now understatnd  from the work of Lavoisier that it was the oxygen in the air that diminished, but for a century, the best scientists in the world followed the phlogistic doctrine.

It interesting that nearly 200 years later, Lavoisier had it correct in his November 19, 1790 letter to Dr Joseph Black at the University of Edinburgh when he writes:

1. La quantité d’air vital ou gaz oxigène qu’un homme en repos et à jeun consomme, ou plutôt convertit en air fixe ou acide carbonique, pendant une heure est de 1200 pouces cubiques de France environ, quand il est placé dans une température de 26 degrés.
2. Cette quantité s’élève à 1400 pouces, dans les mêmes circonstances, si la personne est placée dans une température de 12 degrés seulement.
3. La quantité de gaz oxigène consommée, ou convertie en acide carbonique, augmente pendant le tems de la digestion et s’élève à 1800 ou 1900 pouces.
4. Par le mouvement et l’exercice on la porte jusqu’à 4000 pouces par heure et même davantage…”

1. The quantity of vital air or oxygen gas that a man at rest and fasting consumes, or rather converts into fixed air or carbonic acid for an hour, is 1200 cubic French inches when it is placed in a temperature of 26 degrees.
2. This amount increases to 1400 inches in the same circumstances, if the person is placed in a temperature of 12 degrees only.
3. The amount of oxygen gas consumed or converted into carbonic acid increases during the time of digestion and amounts to 1800 or 1900 inches.
4. By movement and exercise, the amount is increased up to 4000 inches per hour and even more.

Nutrition. Exercise. Thermal Load.  There it is before we even fully agreed on the existence of Oxygen. It might be interesting to note that Lavoisier did this work in his home laboratory and invited scientists from around the world to come work with his equipment.  I like that kind of career and I can completely identify with the inner passion.

This was one of a series of letters written to Dr Black in late 1790 to convince him that the phlogistic doctrine represented good observations, but was fundamentally wrong explanation at the same time.  Dr Black, a stauch advocate of the phlogistic doctrine, replied a two months later not with disdain, but with gracious respect:

…Having been accustomed, for thirty years, to believe and to teach the phlogistic doctrine , as it was understood before the development of your system, I, for a long time, experienced extreme repugnance to the new system, which represented, as absurdity, that which I had hitherto regarded as sound doctrine   Nevertheless, that repugnance, which proceeded entirely from the force of habit, hath gradually diminished, overcome by the clearness of your demonstrations, and solidity of your plan. Although there are some particular facts , the explications of which appears to be difficult; I am convinced, that yours is much better founded than the ancient doctrine…

He goes on to write,

…But if the power of habit prevents some among the older chemists from appreciating your ideas, the young students, who are not influenced by the same power, range themselves universally on your side…

This is how science is ever growing and changes, but these sorts of exchanges can now happen  happen in milliseconds in email and instead of published letters (Lavoisier’s letters to Dr. Black were not publicly published until the late 1800s).  Lavoisier, unfortunately was guillotined just three years later at the age of 50 for his participation in the Ferme générale, an outsourced tax collection service to the king [Note to self: stick with paypal donations]. It was a huge loss and we’ll never know where Lavoisier’s work could really have ended.

The Raging Fire

What strikes me about the totality of this research is the amount of time and widespread acceptance of the simple notion that man kept warm by expending caloric energy.  I’ve had more than one debate with those that should know better, but don’t seem to see the importance of this shift in our daily living environment. Of course keeping warm was an obvious part of life 200 years ago, but we’ve not learned much new to discount it’s importance in the daily balance.

Despite all that, there’s a lot more attention now and more and more people are becoming with both the idea and how it can be used.  We have discussed the  idea surrounding brown Adipose Tissue (BAT) on several blog posts, and it’s quite the rage in the media, but I want to go back to the BATgirl (Part 2) post.

In it we talked about the implications of not having any BAT at all.  We’ve also discussed the idea of exercise induced hormone, Irisin, for potentially creating new BAT, but are there other options? While it certainly can be advantageous to create or have BAT, can anyone, regardless of BAT levels, take advantage of 1) your ability to comfortably adapt to a wider range of cooler temperatures than you might otherwise expect and 2) what mechanisms might be in play when BAT’s not cause for warmth?

Remember, the way BAT causes the heat is through mitochondrial uncoupling – i.e. the cells power plant is encouraged to directly produce waste HEAT instead of ATP for cellular energy.  Since every cell has a mitochondrion for biogenesis, can mitochondrion in cells other than BAT be recruited to the causes?

There are two excellent papers I want to share.  The first is about skeletal muscle mitochondrial uncoupling from  Maastricht University, The Netherlands. (2) I will talk more about respiration calorimetry on the next post, but this study involved measuring the metabolic response in 10 lean men for both a warm (22C) and cool (16 C) environment.

 

Human Skeletal Muscle Mitochondrial Uncoupling Is Associated with Cold Induced Adaptive Thermogenesis

 

 

 

(1) James Bryan Conant, ed. The Overthrow of Phlogiston Theory: The Chemical Revolution of 1775–1789. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, (1950)

(2) Wijers SLJ, Schrauwen P, Saris WHM, van Marken Lichtenbelt WD. Human skeletal muscle mitochondrial uncoupling is associated with cold induced adaptive thermogenesis. PLoS ONE 2008;3:e1777-e1777