Stress Response Mitigation
The autonomic nervous system (ANS) is part of the peripheral nervous system, which controls our involuntary physiological responses. There are two parts to the ANS - the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems.
The sympathetic nervous system is involved in our "fight or flight" response and it is overly stimulated in people with metabolic syndrome/diabetes. This causes for excess glucose production from an exaggerated counter regulatory response. The parasympathetic nervous system is involved in resting and digesting. This system is also faulty in many people with metabolic syndrome/diabetes and causes many digestive issues, such as gastroparesis and dyspepsia. Both of these systems must be kept in balance to maintain health and their proper functioning.
When we are at rest, the body maintains an equilibrium between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. But, when the body is under stress, the sympathetic nervous system becomes overstimulated and the ANS is thrown out of balance. When the sympathetic nervous system becomes dominant, it "sprouts" extra nerves, which leads to elevated levels of norepinephrine, activating the amygdala. This is controlled by a part of the sympathetic nervous system called the Stellate Ganglion, which is a collection of nerves in the neck. These elevated levels of norepinephrine, not only affect behavior, but also further deteriorates blood glucose control. This is why many people with metabolic syndrome/diabetes also suffer from anxiety and depression.
When the term "stress" is used, people usually think of traumatic events or hardship, but abnormal and erratic blood glucose regulation is a chronic stressor on the body. This is why people with metabolic syndrome/diabetes have an overexpressed stress response, because they are under chronic stress from hyper-hypoglycemic events. This constant stress disrupts the body's ANS and leads to uncontrollable blood glucose, inflammation (cortisol abnormalities) and gastrointestinal disease.
Just like with cortisol, a great way to bring the body's ANS into balance, is exercise. Exercise is a pulsatile stressor for the body, which allows it to differentiate between activity and rest. Without this pulsatile signal, the ANS cannot regulate its response properly. Exercise also helps regulate blood glucose control, for better management of the stress response and decrease risk of stress related disorders.
Leptin/Adiponectin Balance
Exercise improves leptin/adiponectin signaling, which regulates fat cell metabolism and affects the homeostasis of all other metabolic hormones.
This isn't surprising, since fat cells are being stimulated to release stored energy, through exercise, and if your diet is restricted in carbohydrates, stored fat would be the preferred energy used. This effect is especially seen in low to moderate strenuous exercises of long duration, like hiking or long distance walking - our natural movement.
Non-strenuous exercises of long duration require mostly fuel from fat. The longer the fat cell is stimulated, by this activity, the more fat it's releasing from its reserves. This is exactly what you want to happen, because it's this excess stored fat that is perpetuating the condition's progression. You have to get it out of storage and the only way to do that is to burn it.
Preservation Of Lean Muscle Mass
Everyone who is trying to lose weight is usually focused, primarily, on fat loss, but that's a recipe for failure. In fact, that's one of the reasons why a lot of people, who lose weight, end up gaining it back. They certainly lost weight and they certainly lost some fat, but they didn't lose enough fat and they didn't gain muscle to replace it. This is why I don't want readers of this blog to be solely focused on fat loss. I want half of that focus to be placed on gaining lean muscle mass. All people with metabolic syndrome, regardless of their disease stage, have one thing in common - low muscle mass. This is why they should all be actively trying to gain it back.
When a person is described as being obese, the description is usually referring to their "scale weight", but that is a misleading reference point. This is because obesity is not always easily determined by scale weight, since many other factors influence scale weight and confound these results. So, how can we better define what exactly is obesity?
Obesity is a state of high body fat and low muscle mass. When total body mass tips in favor of fat, over muscle, the person is obese, regardless of how thin they look or what their scale weight says. They are "thin on the outside, but fat on the inside". This does not occur in the inverse. In other words, if the person appears obese, they aren't "fat on the outside, but thin on the inside". They are just fat. Even the muscle mass they have is not lean, but well marbled with fat. This is great for steaks, but bad for health.
If subcutaneous fat is extended, it's a sure sign that lean muscle mass is low and excess fat is being accumulated viscerally and ectopically. The onset of "disease" is just a matter of time as high body fat is the canary in the coalmine. Not all thin people are metabolically healthy, but all obese people are metabolically unhealthy. Our bodies were made for leanness and excess fat mass, whether visible or invisible, causes metabolic disease in humans.
Losing body fat only takes into account one part of the equation. The other part is gaining lean muscle mass. When you lose fat, it’s not replaced with rainbows or glitter, that only occurs to unicorns. For humans, fat mass must be replaced with muscle mass, because if you don’t replace fat with muscle, you will just become a much thinner looking, but still very obese person, upon "losing weight".
Diet burns fat and exercise builds muscle. Building muscle mass has nothing to do with becoming a "bodybuilder". This is not a bodybuilding blog. Building muscle has everything to do with metabolic health and this is a metabolic health blog. Any metabolic intervention that does not take into account the importance of building lean muscle mass is total quackery.
Diet will not get you all the way to the finish line. I know there are a lot of fat people online, trying to make this case, but they are only trying to justify their own lack of stamina and endurance, as a result of their own low muscle mass. Don't let them drag you down the road they're on.
Being a big, or small, glob of fat is not healthy, as muscle mass drives metabolism. Don't leave your body without a driver. It will only crash and burn.
Burning Of Excess Glucose
Exercising is one of the best ways to burn through excess glucose production. Even though you are restricting carbohydrates, you may still be over producing glucose. Not all glucose is exogenous. You are making plenty of endogenous glucose as well.
Diabetics and people with metabolic syndrome have an over stimulated sympathetic nervous system, which is constantly pushing out glucose, through the overexpression of counter regulatory stress hormones. This makes perfect sense, because erratic blood glucose cause this counter regulatory system to kick into overdrive in order to prevent episodes of hypoglycemia.
The body is extremely resistant to hypoglycemia and will do anything to avoid it, even if it has to cause hyperglycemia instead. Most of the symptoms associated with metabolic syndrome/diabetes are actually the result of normal mechanisms, which are meant to prevent low blood glucose. Your body is actively trying to fight blood glucose from dropping, even by a small amount, in the presence of high insulin levels and/or poor insulin function. This is why blood glucose control is such an uphill battle at times. If it wasn't for this counter regulation, hyperinsulinemia and erratic blood glucose would immediately kill you, long before this assault resulted in diabetes.
Even though diabetics rarely reach medical definitions of hypoglycemia, outside of extreme illness or an improper dose of medication, their stress hormones continue to react as if they are. These glucocorticoids release large amounts of glucose, into the bloodstream, causing bouts of hyperglycemia, which feeds the entire cycle all over again. High blood glucose = more insulin release = more glucose release = a vicious circle. A lot of this glucose is excess stored glucose, that is being released back into the bloodstream, but a good portion of it is also coming from the break down of lean muscle mass. This is why preserving muscle is vital for people with metabolic syndrome/diabetes, as their own body is constantly catabolizing itself at an exaggerated rate.
The best way to reduce this glucose release is to burn it off. Use that glucose for energy instead of letting it build up in the bloodstream or be added to already exceeded glycogen stores. Replenish your glycogen by using what you already have first, instead of adding more to it. Exercise helps regulate the sympathetic nervous system's "flight or fight" response, reducing stress hormones, especially during periods they should not be active. Using your muscles will help disperse glucose, out of your bloodstream, lowering insulin levels and halting the assault on your adrenal counter regulatory system.
Burning Of Body Fat
Long duration aerobic exercise, like walking, uses mainly fat for fuel, with only a small amount of carbohydrate.
This is great, because even though you are still using both fuels, there is a primary demand for fat. Since, fat is already the primary fuel, in a carbohydrate restricted diet, you can now actually use it by making the most of your diet with aerobic exercise. Not only are you using up the glucose your body is making in excess, you are also tapping into your primary fuel source of fat.
Fat is long term energy and glucose is short term. As a species we used more long term energy than short term. Our short term energy reserves were mainly used during moments of "fight or flight", which were not very frequent, since you either escaped and avoided the situation from occurring again or you were caught and didn't have to avoid anything ever again.
Evolution hints at this, as we never evolved a capacity for storing large amounts of glycogen. An indication that we never lived under conditions that had much demand for it. This is why athletes have a very difficult time adjusting to fat based fuel, for their performance, since competition requires, unnatural, short term glucose energy, as you are in a state of constant fight or flight. This is why athletes love to "carb up", because they deplete their glycogen stores very quickly and they are completely dependent on them.
But, humans in a non-competitive, natural environment, lived non-strenuous lives of mostly long-duration movements that required fat energy. This is why we evolved the capacity for large amounts of fat storage. Stalking and hunting prey and hiking to find new water and shelter areas, requires long duration movement that is primarily fat fuel based.
Building Of Lean Muscle Mass
Don't like lifting weights? Like I have said before, you don't have to.
Aerobic exercise, like walking, uses a high volume of low intensity muscle contractions. Though there are two types of muscle fibers, which are responsible for these contractions, slow-twitch and fast-twitch, aerobic exercise mostly uses slow-twitch fibers. Slow-twitch muscle fibers are not very good at getting larger, but their repeated use increases their work capacity significantly. This is actually what makes you stronger, even if you are not getting bigger, as bigger muscles are not indicative of stronger muscles. Powerlifters are much stronger than bodybuilders. This can explain why muscles can become smaller with time, if strength training is stopped, but the strength acquired is preserved.
In addition to improved slow-twitch muscle fibers with exercise, mitochondria within the muscle also increase in size and number, which allows for your muscles to not fatigue as quickly. This improves endurance. Endurance is a very important sign of good health, but it is often ignored. You are in much better health if you can do 20 push ups, than if you can deadlift a fridge.
Good health is not just measured in how large your muscles can become or how heavy you can lift. Endurance and stamina are very important markers of good health, as well. All markers have to be addressed, to make the claim of being truly healthy.
Mobilization Of Fatty Acids
The lymphatic system is the largest circulating system in the body and it does not use the heart to circulate. It uses muscle contractions from movement. This system's primary role is to detoxify the body, but its second role is mobilizing fatty acids for use throughout the body. It comprises most of our immune system and supplies nutrients to parts of the body that contain little to no blood vessels. This is the main system that is targeted in Ayurvedic medicine and recently has become the focus of Western medicine, as we learn more about all of its important functions.
If you are following a carbohydrate restricted diet, then you are already ahead of the game, because you are giving your lymphatic system the fat it requires. Now you have to bring it home through movement. There is no point of having a lot of new building material that's just laying around. You need to begin construction and that is done through exercise. Exercise helps promote protein turnover and allows for the lymphatic system to deliver its new cargo to where it's needed.
Non-Insulin Mediated Glucose Uptake
Exercise promotes the most desirable metabolic effect you will want to acquire - non-insulin mediated glucose uptake. This is a state where the body clears glucose, from the bloodstream, without the need for insulin. Low blood glucose and low insulin is a win/win situation, especially for people with glucose related metabolic disease. This is the reason that an exercise regimen alone, even without dietary intervention, has been shown to be beneficial for type II diabetes patients.
Have you ever experienced very high blood glucose and noticed a sudden drop when you walk around the block? Have you ever heard the conventional diabetes advice of taking a walk around the parking lot, of a restaurant after dinner, to help lower blood glucose? Why would exercise cause blood glucose clearance? After all, if you are insulin resistant, you would be insulin resistant while sitting down, walking, running or sleeping. The insulin resistant state should not change.
It's actually more nuanced than that. In the human body, glucose uptake is accomplished via two mechanisms:
There are 4 family of proteins that work as glucose transporters, which insulin directly stimulates:
Depletion Of Glycogen
Diet and fasting will deplete liver glycogen, but muscle glycogen can only be depleted with exercise.
People with diabetes and metabolic syndrome do the "glycogen shuffle" rather than actual depletion. Not only do they lack the insulin sensitivity required for glycogen synthesis, but they also have an enormous amount of glycogen, stored in their muscles, and if they aren't moving, it's not going anywhere. It just sits there, sort of like they are doing. This is why it can take years for them to lower blood glucose to normal, while sitting in front of a computer.
To achieve metabolic health, not only are you supposed to not put more glucose in; you are supposed to get the glucose you already have out. Sitting all day is not going to accomplish this. Exceeding glycogen storage capacity, is only an avenue for exceeding fat storage capacity. This is the definition of metabolic disease: exceeding all storage capacity.
Your muscles can hold much more glycogen than your liver. For this reason, liver glycogen is depleted fairly quickly and replenished just as fast. Your muscles on the other hand, can store a lot of glycogen and it takes longer to deplete it, if they're not worked through exercise. This is why sedentary diabetics and people with metabolic syndrome have such a hard time "depleting" their glycogen stores. Even though they are rigorously following a fasting and dietary regimen, glucose continues to pour out of them. Not only is their glucagon converting everything to glucose, at an exaggerated rate due to insulin/leptin resistance, this glucose has simply no where to go. The main storage unit, the muscles, are already full, so the glucose goes right back to the liver to start the shuffle all over again and this can be measured with a blood glucose meter. This is also why metabolic function can be improved with only an exercise regimen.
Anyone, that talks to you about metabolism, and how it works, should know that exercise is fundamental for hormonal regulation and homeostasis. They should know that exercise improves the muscle cells insulin sensitivity. This is the first thing that is lost in diabetes. In diabetes the muscles become insulin resistance, while fat cells become highly insulin sensitive.
Exercise directly plays a role in blood glucose metabolism, which does affect weight loss. These benefits are not being acquired, because you are burning calories. They are being acquired through direct hormonal regulation.
So, get out there and burn glucose and I don't mean sitting in a chair lifting stuff. I mean, get up and move, if you’re able to. The best muscle is built alongside cardio. You have to do it consistently and daily. Your butt will thank you and so will the chair.
Mitochondrial Energy Balance
When we hear the term "energy balance", we automatically think about the junk food company's ridiculous advice of curbing obesity. But, in this blog, we know that "energy balance" is solely at the discretion of your neuroendocrine system and you have very little say on it, aside from choosing the right macronutrient composition to help your metabolism balance its own energy. But, there is an area where energy balance is important and that's in the mitochondria.
Mitochondria are organelles found, in large numbers, in most cells. They are responsible for the cells biochemical processes of respiration and energy production. Mitochondria are like little power plants. They produce energy, so you can use it. There needs to be a tightly regulated balance between energy produced and energy used for mitochondria to remain healthy.
Normal aging decreases your body's ability to create mitochondria. Having less mitochondria puts you at risk for age related diseases, like neurodegeneration and muscle loss. You can change this outcome by challenging your body to make new mitochondria and the best way to do this is through exercise.
Exercise helps you burn energy, so your mitochondria can continue producing more of it. Aerobic exercise stimulates the mitochondria organelles to swell and break. Once repaired they have a much greater volume. Basically, they are re-built better and stronger than before, sort of like the Bionic Man.
Another important effect that exercise has, in the mitochondria, is the balancing of mitochondrial fusion and fission. Although mitochondria are commonly depicted as singular, oval-shaped structures, they are actually highly dynamic and alter their shape and length, in different cell types, through fusion and fission with proteins. This continuous effect gives rise to mitochondrial networks. This process has significant implications in the stress response and apoptosis of cells.
It has been noted than normal weight mice have an equal mitochondrial fusion and fission balance, but overweight mice have too much fission. Excess fission triggers the unwanted death of important cells (apoptosis) and their organelles. Aerobic exercise protects your body from this mitochondrial dysfunction. Exercise decreases fission proteins and increases fusion proteins. This helps restore the fusion/fission balance.
So, the next time you hear the term "energy balance", you will know exactly where it truly makes a difference - at your mitochondria.
Ceramide Flux
Ceramides are a family of waxy lipids. They play a very important role in cell health, since they are part of the sphingomyelin lipid system, which is the predominant lipid found in many cell membranes.
Ceramides are being coined as "toxic fat", since they play a role in lipotoxicity, when found in excess. In other words, they are known to cause dysfunction in how other lipids work. Fat cells not only store triglycerides, but they also help the body sense its nutritional status by secreting compounds that communicate with other cells. Among those signaling compounds are ceramides. Abnormal alterations to this cellular nutritional status signaling is believed to be at "the root" of metabolic disease.
Since ceramides decrease metabolic activity of fat tissue, when they are blocked fat cells can burn more energy. In the laboratory, mice that produced fewer ceramides were protected from diabetes and fatty liver disease. Blocking ceramides also helps increase the number of beige or brown fat cells. Beige and brown fat cells are full of mitochondria. These cells are more metabolically active than white fat cells, because they burn more energy, rather than store it.
Because of all of this, you might start believing that ceramides are bad news, but remember what I wrote in the beginning. These abnormalities only occur when ceramides are in excess. So, I beg to differ about ceramides being "toxic fat". That claim might make great clickbait, but it's a lie. Ceramides are not, in of themselves, "toxic". They just behave that way under the context of metabolic disease, which increases their numbers dramatically.
This ceramide abnormality is just one more manifestation, in a long laundry list of abnormalities, present in metabolic dysfunction. Ceramides do not spontaneously become abnormal, something causes them to behave that way.
So, why do people with metabolic disease have excess ceramides? Some of the stimuli that increases the production of ceramides are apoptosis and cytokines.
Exercise of moderate intensity results in a reduction of both ceramide and sphingomyelin fatty acids, with an overall higher reduction of total ceramide fatty acids. Exercise also reduces the activity of ceramides on the fat cells. This means that there is a sphingomyelin signaling pathway, present in skeletal muscle and it is affected by prolonged contractile activity.
Well, it seems like "the root" cause of excess ceramides, is sitting on your behind all day. Who would have guessed.....
Circadian Regulation
Exposure to nature helps normalize circadian rhythms and restore pituitary, dopamine and leptin health.
Leptin and insulin, both regulate basal dopamine synthesis. Dopamine allows metabolism to adapt to its environment by detecting changes in the seasons/temperature, regulating metabolic rate. But, if the body is in a constant, never changing environment, this signal is slowly down regulated and natural, seasonal circadian rhythms are lost. This dysregulates the body's appetite and energy storage cycles.
This is why walking out in nature is so important. The body needs to feel cold, heat, sunlight, wind, natural air, rain, etc. It needs to see water, blue skies and green land. These things trigger dopamine and signal to the body that it’s in a natural environment. It might sometimes be uncomfortable for you, but this discomfort is beneficial to the body.
The autonomic nervous system (ANS) is part of the peripheral nervous system, which controls our involuntary physiological responses. There are two parts to the ANS - the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems.
The sympathetic nervous system is involved in our "fight or flight" response and it is overly stimulated in people with metabolic syndrome/diabetes. This causes for excess glucose production from an exaggerated counter regulatory response. The parasympathetic nervous system is involved in resting and digesting. This system is also faulty in many people with metabolic syndrome/diabetes and causes many digestive issues, such as gastroparesis and dyspepsia. Both of these systems must be kept in balance to maintain health and their proper functioning.
When we are at rest, the body maintains an equilibrium between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. But, when the body is under stress, the sympathetic nervous system becomes overstimulated and the ANS is thrown out of balance. When the sympathetic nervous system becomes dominant, it "sprouts" extra nerves, which leads to elevated levels of norepinephrine, activating the amygdala. This is controlled by a part of the sympathetic nervous system called the Stellate Ganglion, which is a collection of nerves in the neck. These elevated levels of norepinephrine, not only affect behavior, but also further deteriorates blood glucose control. This is why many people with metabolic syndrome/diabetes also suffer from anxiety and depression.
When the term "stress" is used, people usually think of traumatic events or hardship, but abnormal and erratic blood glucose regulation is a chronic stressor on the body. This is why people with metabolic syndrome/diabetes have an overexpressed stress response, because they are under chronic stress from hyper-hypoglycemic events. This constant stress disrupts the body's ANS and leads to uncontrollable blood glucose, inflammation (cortisol abnormalities) and gastrointestinal disease.
Just like with cortisol, a great way to bring the body's ANS into balance, is exercise. Exercise is a pulsatile stressor for the body, which allows it to differentiate between activity and rest. Without this pulsatile signal, the ANS cannot regulate its response properly. Exercise also helps regulate blood glucose control, for better management of the stress response and decrease risk of stress related disorders.
Leptin/Adiponectin Balance
Exercise improves leptin/adiponectin signaling, which regulates fat cell metabolism and affects the homeostasis of all other metabolic hormones.
This isn't surprising, since fat cells are being stimulated to release stored energy, through exercise, and if your diet is restricted in carbohydrates, stored fat would be the preferred energy used. This effect is especially seen in low to moderate strenuous exercises of long duration, like hiking or long distance walking - our natural movement.
Non-strenuous exercises of long duration require mostly fuel from fat. The longer the fat cell is stimulated, by this activity, the more fat it's releasing from its reserves. This is exactly what you want to happen, because it's this excess stored fat that is perpetuating the condition's progression. You have to get it out of storage and the only way to do that is to burn it.
Preservation Of Lean Muscle Mass
Everyone who is trying to lose weight is usually focused, primarily, on fat loss, but that's a recipe for failure. In fact, that's one of the reasons why a lot of people, who lose weight, end up gaining it back. They certainly lost weight and they certainly lost some fat, but they didn't lose enough fat and they didn't gain muscle to replace it. This is why I don't want readers of this blog to be solely focused on fat loss. I want half of that focus to be placed on gaining lean muscle mass. All people with metabolic syndrome, regardless of their disease stage, have one thing in common - low muscle mass. This is why they should all be actively trying to gain it back.
When a person is described as being obese, the description is usually referring to their "scale weight", but that is a misleading reference point. This is because obesity is not always easily determined by scale weight, since many other factors influence scale weight and confound these results. So, how can we better define what exactly is obesity?
Obesity is a state of high body fat and low muscle mass. When total body mass tips in favor of fat, over muscle, the person is obese, regardless of how thin they look or what their scale weight says. They are "thin on the outside, but fat on the inside". This does not occur in the inverse. In other words, if the person appears obese, they aren't "fat on the outside, but thin on the inside". They are just fat. Even the muscle mass they have is not lean, but well marbled with fat. This is great for steaks, but bad for health.
If subcutaneous fat is extended, it's a sure sign that lean muscle mass is low and excess fat is being accumulated viscerally and ectopically. The onset of "disease" is just a matter of time as high body fat is the canary in the coalmine. Not all thin people are metabolically healthy, but all obese people are metabolically unhealthy. Our bodies were made for leanness and excess fat mass, whether visible or invisible, causes metabolic disease in humans.
Losing body fat only takes into account one part of the equation. The other part is gaining lean muscle mass. When you lose fat, it’s not replaced with rainbows or glitter, that only occurs to unicorns. For humans, fat mass must be replaced with muscle mass, because if you don’t replace fat with muscle, you will just become a much thinner looking, but still very obese person, upon "losing weight".
Diet burns fat and exercise builds muscle. Building muscle mass has nothing to do with becoming a "bodybuilder". This is not a bodybuilding blog. Building muscle has everything to do with metabolic health and this is a metabolic health blog. Any metabolic intervention that does not take into account the importance of building lean muscle mass is total quackery.
Diet will not get you all the way to the finish line. I know there are a lot of fat people online, trying to make this case, but they are only trying to justify their own lack of stamina and endurance, as a result of their own low muscle mass. Don't let them drag you down the road they're on.
Being a big, or small, glob of fat is not healthy, as muscle mass drives metabolism. Don't leave your body without a driver. It will only crash and burn.
Burning Of Excess Glucose
Exercising is one of the best ways to burn through excess glucose production. Even though you are restricting carbohydrates, you may still be over producing glucose. Not all glucose is exogenous. You are making plenty of endogenous glucose as well.
Diabetics and people with metabolic syndrome have an over stimulated sympathetic nervous system, which is constantly pushing out glucose, through the overexpression of counter regulatory stress hormones. This makes perfect sense, because erratic blood glucose cause this counter regulatory system to kick into overdrive in order to prevent episodes of hypoglycemia.
The body is extremely resistant to hypoglycemia and will do anything to avoid it, even if it has to cause hyperglycemia instead. Most of the symptoms associated with metabolic syndrome/diabetes are actually the result of normal mechanisms, which are meant to prevent low blood glucose. Your body is actively trying to fight blood glucose from dropping, even by a small amount, in the presence of high insulin levels and/or poor insulin function. This is why blood glucose control is such an uphill battle at times. If it wasn't for this counter regulation, hyperinsulinemia and erratic blood glucose would immediately kill you, long before this assault resulted in diabetes.
Even though diabetics rarely reach medical definitions of hypoglycemia, outside of extreme illness or an improper dose of medication, their stress hormones continue to react as if they are. These glucocorticoids release large amounts of glucose, into the bloodstream, causing bouts of hyperglycemia, which feeds the entire cycle all over again. High blood glucose = more insulin release = more glucose release = a vicious circle. A lot of this glucose is excess stored glucose, that is being released back into the bloodstream, but a good portion of it is also coming from the break down of lean muscle mass. This is why preserving muscle is vital for people with metabolic syndrome/diabetes, as their own body is constantly catabolizing itself at an exaggerated rate.
The best way to reduce this glucose release is to burn it off. Use that glucose for energy instead of letting it build up in the bloodstream or be added to already exceeded glycogen stores. Replenish your glycogen by using what you already have first, instead of adding more to it. Exercise helps regulate the sympathetic nervous system's "flight or fight" response, reducing stress hormones, especially during periods they should not be active. Using your muscles will help disperse glucose, out of your bloodstream, lowering insulin levels and halting the assault on your adrenal counter regulatory system.
Burning Of Body Fat
Long duration aerobic exercise, like walking, uses mainly fat for fuel, with only a small amount of carbohydrate.
This is great, because even though you are still using both fuels, there is a primary demand for fat. Since, fat is already the primary fuel, in a carbohydrate restricted diet, you can now actually use it by making the most of your diet with aerobic exercise. Not only are you using up the glucose your body is making in excess, you are also tapping into your primary fuel source of fat.
Fat is long term energy and glucose is short term. As a species we used more long term energy than short term. Our short term energy reserves were mainly used during moments of "fight or flight", which were not very frequent, since you either escaped and avoided the situation from occurring again or you were caught and didn't have to avoid anything ever again.
Evolution hints at this, as we never evolved a capacity for storing large amounts of glycogen. An indication that we never lived under conditions that had much demand for it. This is why athletes have a very difficult time adjusting to fat based fuel, for their performance, since competition requires, unnatural, short term glucose energy, as you are in a state of constant fight or flight. This is why athletes love to "carb up", because they deplete their glycogen stores very quickly and they are completely dependent on them.
But, humans in a non-competitive, natural environment, lived non-strenuous lives of mostly long-duration movements that required fat energy. This is why we evolved the capacity for large amounts of fat storage. Stalking and hunting prey and hiking to find new water and shelter areas, requires long duration movement that is primarily fat fuel based.
Building Of Lean Muscle Mass
Don't like lifting weights? Like I have said before, you don't have to.
Aerobic exercise, like walking, uses a high volume of low intensity muscle contractions. Though there are two types of muscle fibers, which are responsible for these contractions, slow-twitch and fast-twitch, aerobic exercise mostly uses slow-twitch fibers. Slow-twitch muscle fibers are not very good at getting larger, but their repeated use increases their work capacity significantly. This is actually what makes you stronger, even if you are not getting bigger, as bigger muscles are not indicative of stronger muscles. Powerlifters are much stronger than bodybuilders. This can explain why muscles can become smaller with time, if strength training is stopped, but the strength acquired is preserved.
In addition to improved slow-twitch muscle fibers with exercise, mitochondria within the muscle also increase in size and number, which allows for your muscles to not fatigue as quickly. This improves endurance. Endurance is a very important sign of good health, but it is often ignored. You are in much better health if you can do 20 push ups, than if you can deadlift a fridge.
Good health is not just measured in how large your muscles can become or how heavy you can lift. Endurance and stamina are very important markers of good health, as well. All markers have to be addressed, to make the claim of being truly healthy.
Mobilization Of Fatty Acids
The lymphatic system is the largest circulating system in the body and it does not use the heart to circulate. It uses muscle contractions from movement. This system's primary role is to detoxify the body, but its second role is mobilizing fatty acids for use throughout the body. It comprises most of our immune system and supplies nutrients to parts of the body that contain little to no blood vessels. This is the main system that is targeted in Ayurvedic medicine and recently has become the focus of Western medicine, as we learn more about all of its important functions.
If you are following a carbohydrate restricted diet, then you are already ahead of the game, because you are giving your lymphatic system the fat it requires. Now you have to bring it home through movement. There is no point of having a lot of new building material that's just laying around. You need to begin construction and that is done through exercise. Exercise helps promote protein turnover and allows for the lymphatic system to deliver its new cargo to where it's needed.
Non-Insulin Mediated Glucose Uptake
Exercise promotes the most desirable metabolic effect you will want to acquire - non-insulin mediated glucose uptake. This is a state where the body clears glucose, from the bloodstream, without the need for insulin. Low blood glucose and low insulin is a win/win situation, especially for people with glucose related metabolic disease. This is the reason that an exercise regimen alone, even without dietary intervention, has been shown to be beneficial for type II diabetes patients.
Have you ever experienced very high blood glucose and noticed a sudden drop when you walk around the block? Have you ever heard the conventional diabetes advice of taking a walk around the parking lot, of a restaurant after dinner, to help lower blood glucose? Why would exercise cause blood glucose clearance? After all, if you are insulin resistant, you would be insulin resistant while sitting down, walking, running or sleeping. The insulin resistant state should not change.
It's actually more nuanced than that. In the human body, glucose uptake is accomplished via two mechanisms:
- Insulin mediated glucose uptake, which occurs only in insulin sensitive tissues like the liver, muscle and fat cells.
- Non-insulin mediated glucose uptake, which occurs in both insulin sensitive and non-insulin sensitive tissues like the brain, blood cells, nerves, etc.
There are 4 family of proteins that work as glucose transporters, which insulin directly stimulates:
- GLUT1: This transporter is distributed throughout the body and exhibits constant transport activity.
- GLUT2: This transporter is present in the gut, liver and pancreatic islets.
- GLUT3: This transporter is present in the central nervous system and brain.
- GLUT4: This transporter is present in insulin-responsive tissues like the skeletal muscle, adipose tissue and heart.
Depletion Of Glycogen
Diet and fasting will deplete liver glycogen, but muscle glycogen can only be depleted with exercise.
People with diabetes and metabolic syndrome do the "glycogen shuffle" rather than actual depletion. Not only do they lack the insulin sensitivity required for glycogen synthesis, but they also have an enormous amount of glycogen, stored in their muscles, and if they aren't moving, it's not going anywhere. It just sits there, sort of like they are doing. This is why it can take years for them to lower blood glucose to normal, while sitting in front of a computer.
To achieve metabolic health, not only are you supposed to not put more glucose in; you are supposed to get the glucose you already have out. Sitting all day is not going to accomplish this. Exceeding glycogen storage capacity, is only an avenue for exceeding fat storage capacity. This is the definition of metabolic disease: exceeding all storage capacity.
Your muscles can hold much more glycogen than your liver. For this reason, liver glycogen is depleted fairly quickly and replenished just as fast. Your muscles on the other hand, can store a lot of glycogen and it takes longer to deplete it, if they're not worked through exercise. This is why sedentary diabetics and people with metabolic syndrome have such a hard time "depleting" their glycogen stores. Even though they are rigorously following a fasting and dietary regimen, glucose continues to pour out of them. Not only is their glucagon converting everything to glucose, at an exaggerated rate due to insulin/leptin resistance, this glucose has simply no where to go. The main storage unit, the muscles, are already full, so the glucose goes right back to the liver to start the shuffle all over again and this can be measured with a blood glucose meter. This is also why metabolic function can be improved with only an exercise regimen.
Anyone, that talks to you about metabolism, and how it works, should know that exercise is fundamental for hormonal regulation and homeostasis. They should know that exercise improves the muscle cells insulin sensitivity. This is the first thing that is lost in diabetes. In diabetes the muscles become insulin resistance, while fat cells become highly insulin sensitive.
Exercise directly plays a role in blood glucose metabolism, which does affect weight loss. These benefits are not being acquired, because you are burning calories. They are being acquired through direct hormonal regulation.
So, get out there and burn glucose and I don't mean sitting in a chair lifting stuff. I mean, get up and move, if you’re able to. The best muscle is built alongside cardio. You have to do it consistently and daily. Your butt will thank you and so will the chair.
Mitochondrial Energy Balance
When we hear the term "energy balance", we automatically think about the junk food company's ridiculous advice of curbing obesity. But, in this blog, we know that "energy balance" is solely at the discretion of your neuroendocrine system and you have very little say on it, aside from choosing the right macronutrient composition to help your metabolism balance its own energy. But, there is an area where energy balance is important and that's in the mitochondria.
Mitochondria are organelles found, in large numbers, in most cells. They are responsible for the cells biochemical processes of respiration and energy production. Mitochondria are like little power plants. They produce energy, so you can use it. There needs to be a tightly regulated balance between energy produced and energy used for mitochondria to remain healthy.
Normal aging decreases your body's ability to create mitochondria. Having less mitochondria puts you at risk for age related diseases, like neurodegeneration and muscle loss. You can change this outcome by challenging your body to make new mitochondria and the best way to do this is through exercise.
Exercise helps you burn energy, so your mitochondria can continue producing more of it. Aerobic exercise stimulates the mitochondria organelles to swell and break. Once repaired they have a much greater volume. Basically, they are re-built better and stronger than before, sort of like the Bionic Man.
Another important effect that exercise has, in the mitochondria, is the balancing of mitochondrial fusion and fission. Although mitochondria are commonly depicted as singular, oval-shaped structures, they are actually highly dynamic and alter their shape and length, in different cell types, through fusion and fission with proteins. This continuous effect gives rise to mitochondrial networks. This process has significant implications in the stress response and apoptosis of cells.
It has been noted than normal weight mice have an equal mitochondrial fusion and fission balance, but overweight mice have too much fission. Excess fission triggers the unwanted death of important cells (apoptosis) and their organelles. Aerobic exercise protects your body from this mitochondrial dysfunction. Exercise decreases fission proteins and increases fusion proteins. This helps restore the fusion/fission balance.
So, the next time you hear the term "energy balance", you will know exactly where it truly makes a difference - at your mitochondria.
Ceramide Flux
Ceramides are a family of waxy lipids. They play a very important role in cell health, since they are part of the sphingomyelin lipid system, which is the predominant lipid found in many cell membranes.
Ceramides are being coined as "toxic fat", since they play a role in lipotoxicity, when found in excess. In other words, they are known to cause dysfunction in how other lipids work. Fat cells not only store triglycerides, but they also help the body sense its nutritional status by secreting compounds that communicate with other cells. Among those signaling compounds are ceramides. Abnormal alterations to this cellular nutritional status signaling is believed to be at "the root" of metabolic disease.
Since ceramides decrease metabolic activity of fat tissue, when they are blocked fat cells can burn more energy. In the laboratory, mice that produced fewer ceramides were protected from diabetes and fatty liver disease. Blocking ceramides also helps increase the number of beige or brown fat cells. Beige and brown fat cells are full of mitochondria. These cells are more metabolically active than white fat cells, because they burn more energy, rather than store it.
Because of all of this, you might start believing that ceramides are bad news, but remember what I wrote in the beginning. These abnormalities only occur when ceramides are in excess. So, I beg to differ about ceramides being "toxic fat". That claim might make great clickbait, but it's a lie. Ceramides are not, in of themselves, "toxic". They just behave that way under the context of metabolic disease, which increases their numbers dramatically.
This ceramide abnormality is just one more manifestation, in a long laundry list of abnormalities, present in metabolic dysfunction. Ceramides do not spontaneously become abnormal, something causes them to behave that way.
So, why do people with metabolic disease have excess ceramides? Some of the stimuli that increases the production of ceramides are apoptosis and cytokines.
- Apoptosis is a form of cell death. It is a normal and controlled part of an organism's growth, but certain conditions cause for it to occur more frequently than it should. Apoptosis is a common occurrence in the fat cells of the obese, because they are abnormal, and this attracts cytokines.
- Cytokines are a number of substances secreted by certain cells of the immune system. Cytokines are found in abundance in the fat tissue of people with excess body fat. This gives us a clue, as to one of the reasons behind this excess in ceramides found in the obese and metabolically abnormal.
Exercise of moderate intensity results in a reduction of both ceramide and sphingomyelin fatty acids, with an overall higher reduction of total ceramide fatty acids. Exercise also reduces the activity of ceramides on the fat cells. This means that there is a sphingomyelin signaling pathway, present in skeletal muscle and it is affected by prolonged contractile activity.
Well, it seems like "the root" cause of excess ceramides, is sitting on your behind all day. Who would have guessed.....
Circadian Regulation
Exposure to nature helps normalize circadian rhythms and restore pituitary, dopamine and leptin health.
Leptin and insulin, both regulate basal dopamine synthesis. Dopamine allows metabolism to adapt to its environment by detecting changes in the seasons/temperature, regulating metabolic rate. But, if the body is in a constant, never changing environment, this signal is slowly down regulated and natural, seasonal circadian rhythms are lost. This dysregulates the body's appetite and energy storage cycles.
This is why walking out in nature is so important. The body needs to feel cold, heat, sunlight, wind, natural air, rain, etc. It needs to see water, blue skies and green land. These things trigger dopamine and signal to the body that it’s in a natural environment. It might sometimes be uncomfortable for you, but this discomfort is beneficial to the body.
Obesity Induced Lymphatic Dysfunction
I have spoken before on the importance of exercise and lymphatic system function. After all, the lymphatic system is not dependent on the circulatory system, in order to function, but on physical movement instead. Did you know that studies have shown that obesity significantly impairs lymphatic function by decreasing its pumping frequency and vessel density, while increasing leakiness and altering gene expression of lymphatic markers? Is there any good news to this?
Well, aerobic exercise has been shown to reverse these abnormalities, independent of weight loss, suggesting that behavioral modifications are a viable means of treating obesity induced lymphatic dysfunction. This is important because this lymphatic dysfunction has been shown to amplify the pathology of obesity by contributing to contact hypersensitivity, dermatitis, atherosclerosis, hypercholesterolemia and impaired glucose sensitivity in the obese.
Aerobic exercise markedly decreases the accumulation of inflammatory T cells and the systemic expression of inflammatory cytokines, which effect adipose tissue and the skeletal muscles. Having a healthy lymphatic system is also necessary for the absorption of fat soluble vitamins, providing a defense against disease.
So, make sure you get out there and move your lymphatic system!
No Metabolic Adaptation
We all know that exercise becomes adaptive with time. Metabolism always becomes more efficient with the energy usage it is exposed to. Whatever our training routine is, it always has to be increased periodically because the body will adapt and you will no longer experience the same benefits as you did in the beginning. This is what causes people to simply give up on their exercise routine but we also see this occur with calorically restricted diets as well. Whatever benefits your diet had in the beginning, soon seize, and you have to double down to continue achieving results. Well, soon you can't double down enough.
If you run, you will soon have to run further and longer in order to continue seeing benefits. If you lift weights, you have to lift heavier and more frequently in order to achieve the same results and keep your gains. Soon, your routine will become unsustainable. Worse, the more prolonged and strenuous your exercise routine becomes, the more cortisol expression and everything you are working for will be broken down quicker than you can replace it. This is why performance enhancement drugs and supplements exist because "working harder" begins to work against you. You need to work smarter instead.
One exercise routine that does not cause this dreaded adaptation is walking. Walking is not adaptive. This means that you can continue with a walking routine, that is sustainable for you, and the benefits never wane. You will continue to burn the same body fat, grow the same muscle and improve cardiovascular endurance without ever having to increase your output. Not only does this keep you motivated but it keeps you consistent.
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