HPC-UK Bitesize (Health): Exercise; Buffers the Blahs

Stress is a serious risk factor for health that’s rooted not only in our minds, but also in our bodies, brains and cells. Although stress is unavoidable, we can improve stress resilience through many means such as social connection, cultivating mindfulness and positive psychological states, and also developing awareness of arousal and learning to control it.

A commonly held belief is that exercise is a stress modulator; if you’re too wired up, it calms you down, and if you’re down, it picks you up. But exercise also has profound effects on stress resilience outside of the exercise session itself.

A recent study looked at this influence of exercise. 303 women (out of 372 who began) completed a study which was looking at the link between exercise, life events e.g. job losses, bereavements etc. and the incidents of perceived stress and depressive episodes.

Remember perceived stress is a key distinction, as a situation that stresses one person out might not bother another at all, but perceived stress is all that is needed for us to produce a kind of “stress soup” in our cells that can negatively impact both our physical and psychological well-being. You can read more about perceived stress here http://humanperformanceconsulting-uk.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/what-is-real.html

The researchers found that life events, not surprisingly, were strongly correlated with both perceived stress and depressive episodes. They also found that exercise was also linked to a higher perception of stress, but a lower depressive response. The control group (no exercise intervention) had no such elevation in perceived stress, but had a higher incidence of depressive episodes following a life event.

So it seems that exercise increases the perception of stress attached to an event, this is possibly because you are more actively able to engage in the situation, as opposed to someone who is not as ‘fit’. But even in this heightened state of perceived stress the exercise helps to buffer the effects of the stress so that it doesn’t overwhelm the body and mind and thus result in depression.

Reference:

O'Dougherty M et al. Life events, perceived stress and depressive symptoms in a physical activity intervention with young adult women. Ment Health Phys Act. 2012 Dec 1;5(2):148-154. Epub 2012 May 30.

OMG!!!...

In the past few months there has been a post circulating regarding the manufacturing process of margarine, with the ‘shocking’ revelation that it is but one molecule away from being plastic and shares 27 ingredients in common with paint… O.o

Apart from the fact that the entire piece was taking liberties with the actual facts, it begs a more pertinent question: where do the people who were shocked by the slightly disingenuous claims think that the ingredients/ chemicals used to produce processed food (or other products) actually comes from?

For example, I could, if I were so inclined, inform you that if you’ve ever consumed a soft drink that uses ‘synthetic caffeine’, then you’ve possibly just imbibed a substance made from urea. I could then up the ante by briefly explaining that urea is a ‘waste’ product found in urine. Cue the OMG’s and other hollow displays of emotion devoid of any real substance.

Urea is a relatively cheap raw material that is used as a starting point for the production of many products such as feed for livestock, fertiliser, plastics, and in resin and adhesive production.

I could leave it there, and not have told a lie; well, actually it depends upon which definition of lie we use. It would’ve been a lie of omission, as I would’ve failed to inform you that the image I ‘primed’ in your mind, that of a connection between urea and urine isn’t relevant in this case as the majority of the urea used in manufacturing is sourced from natural gas.

Whenever you read something on the web, always heed the words of the great 19th Century American President Abraham Lincoln ‘Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet’.

HPC-UK Bitesize (Fat Loss): Why Dieting Doesn’t Work; Brain Circuits

We all know that common approaches to dieting don’t work. This is partly because they are, no matter how they wrap it up, still based on the overly simplistic and erroneous notion of ‘calorie balance'. It’s a lot more complicated than that, and if you go down that path, then you’ll continually struggle to control your weight (fat). A new piece of research has given us a glimpse into one mechanism that is part of this problem.

Imagine you are driving a car, and the harder you press on the accelerator, the harder an invisible foot presses on the brake. That's what happens when people diet – the less food they eat, the less energy they use, and the less fat they lose.

Neuropepetide Y (NPY) is best known for its powerful stimulation of food intake and its effects on reducing energy expenditure; this has been known for a good while now, but we didn’t quite know how it worked. Now thanks to the scientists at Sydney's Garvan Institute of Medical Research and the University of NSW we have a better understanding.

When you don't eat, or dramatically curtail your energy intake, levels of NPY rise sharply. High levels of NPY signal to the body that it is in 'starvation mode' and should try to replenish and conserve as much energy as possible. As a result, the body reduces processes that are not absolutely necessary for survival. In a nutshell, your hunger drive goes into overdrive, your heat output is reduced and your libido and general energy levels get pummelled.

The researchers found that NPY produced in a particular region of the brain called the ‘arcuate nucleus (Arc) of the hypothalamus’ inhibits the activation of 'brown fat', one of the primary tissues where the body generates heat (*see links below). This study is the first to identify the neurotransmitters and neural pathways that carry signals generated by NPY in the brain to brown fat cells in the body. It is also the first to show a direct connection between Arc NPY, the sympathetic nervous system and the control of energy expenditure.

Reference:

Yan-Chuan Shi et al. Arcuate NPY Controls Sympathetic Output and BAT Function via a Relay of Tyrosine Hydroxylase Neurons in the PVN. Cell Metabolism, Volume 17, Issue 2, 236-248, 5 February 201

* http://humanperformanceconsulting-uk.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/hpc-uks-top-tips-for-fat-loss-tip-no9.html

* http://humanperformanceconsulting-uk.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/ive-got-chills-theyre-multiplying.html

What Your Gym/ Exercise Class Doesn’t Tell You…

‘The Exercise Equation’

Exercise sessions in themselves don’t actually result in appreciable fat loss. That’s a pretty bold, counterintuitive, and almost heretical statement, but it’s actually closer to the truth than you would’ve been told. Here are the approximate energy expenditures for a range of activities (please remember I’m only using Calories as a measurement as it will be the most familiar to most people):

During 1 hr of Exercise an average sized person will expend:

- Aerobics 414 Cal
- Running @ 8mph 1098 Cal
- Weight Training (40s btw Sets) 898 Cal
- Weight Training (90s btw Sets) 450 Cal

So if we were to just look at the ‘Eat Less, Move More’ simplistic premise, which activity would we choose? Running right? After all we expend over twice as much ‘energy’ as both aerobics (low intensity) and weight training (90 second rest between sets). Even if we drop our rest periods to less than half (40 seconds) during weight training, running still expends 120% more energy. However, as you’re beginning to appreciate there’s nothing simple about the Human body. Here’s why just looking at Caloric expenditure is insufficient when approaching exercise for losing body-fat.

‘The First Kicker’

The first 20-30 minutes of any exercise primarily uses carbohydrate as a fuel source due to hormonal restraints. So no matter what exercise type you choose or how you structure these sessions, hardly any fat is used in the first half an hour. After this initial point depending on the intensity, duration, and ingested nutrients, the relative percentage of fat used changes. Let’s have a quick look at the above activities in light of this knowledge and what it means for fat loss:

Aerobics

- 414 Cals
- (-first 20 mins) = 276
- 40% fat = 110 Cals from fat
- To use 1 lb of fat would require around 32 of these sessions

Running

- 1098 Cals
- (- first 20 mins) = 732 Cals
- 25% fat = 183 Cals from fat
- To use 1 lb of fat would require around 19 of these sessions

Weight Training

- 898 Cals
- (-first 20 mins) = 598 Cals
- 25% fat = 150 Cals from fat
- To use 1 lb of fat would require around 23 of these sessions


In fact it’s even worse than this; if you had just sat on your bum for an hour, an average sized man would’ve still used 72 Kcal worth of Energy; and because the intensity is low, a fairly large percentage (47 Kcal worth) would be from fat. So you have to take this away from the above equation which would lower the fat loss from each session further.

So a 1 hour aerobics class only puts you ahead by 63 Kcal worth of fat, running only 136 Kcal from fat and weight training only 103 Kcal from fat. Or put another way: 1, 3, and 2 teaspoons of fat, respectively.

‘Putting the Boot In’

And these are in situations specifically set up to tilt the balance in favour of fat oxidation. If you’re performing them in the morning after an overnight fast and you’re metabolically healthy then, you ‘may’ approach these numbers. If you’re doing it in the evening in a non-fasted state and you’re metabolically ‘damaged’, then the entire dynamic is altered away from fat usage.

One final wrinkle is your current conditioning; to be able to achieve the above sessions you need to be in fairly good shape already. For example, the running workout requires you to run at 8 miles per hour outdoors; that is not an easy pace especially when factoring in the weather and terrain. On a treadmill you’d need to be clipping along at 13kph at a minimum 2-4% incline for an entire hour. If you’re well conditioned you can do this and your body will start incorporating fat into the mix after 20 min’s. If you are not currently in great condition then you’d struggle to complete the workout, and even if you could, because the relative intensity would be higher for you, then your body cannot incorporate fat into the fuel mix.

So am I saying exercise is ineffective for fat loss? Not at all, but it’s nothing to do with the fat (or even the ‘Calories’) used during the workout, nor is it really to do with the raised metabolic rate outside of the workout either. So if your gym or exercise class is belabouring the Calorie ‘burn’ or even ‘After-burn’ of a particular workout then consider what they do actually know, because it certainly isn’t exercise science.

What Your ‘Detox’ Guru Doesn’t Tell You…

De-tox or Re-tox?

For the past few years there have been an increasing number of diets that promise to ‘detox’ your body, usually in 3 to 9 days. They are often touted as helping you become healthier and lose fat. These diets usually come ‘bundled’ with, or purely are, a set of products to aid you in flushing out the toxins; trouble is they usually do the opposite.

Many of these products are based on juicing (mostly fruit, then a smaller amount of vegetables, and sometimes finally a few herbs and spices, all of which have been blended and sometimes mechanically separated into fluid and pulp). Looking at the ingredient list of some of these products, you’d be hard pressed to say anything bad against them; ‘if’ they were in context. The problem is they’re so far from context that it’s not even funny.

I’m looking at one particular product right now that on the surface looks amazing; 7 different fruits, 9 different vegetables and an assortment of herbs and spices. Problem is in biochemistry it’s the dosage often separates the cure from the poison. Just analysing the fruit content of this product, in one day you’ll be ingesting 225g of sugar, of which 135g is fructose. That is A LOT.

I’m not so worried about the glucose element of the equation (acutely, chronic intakes are a different story), as a generally healthy body is pretty adept at handling that form of sugar even in large amounts. But the fructose component is a completely different animal.

To put it in context, our ancestors living on a diet of mostly vegetables and in-season fruit would’ve had a daily intake of roughly 15g of fructose; this is the amount we evolved to consume. This amount of fructose is fairly easily dealt with by the body, even double this would be too. However, just one day on one of these juice de-tox’s loads your body with 9 times that amount of fructose, and that’s just from the fruit part, there’s more if you factor in the vegetables.

So what does this fructose load do? Well, only the liver can metabolise fructose, so by ingesting huge amounts of ‘juice’ you’re placing a massive burden on this vital organ. And as you’ll see, instead of helping you de-tox, these types of juicing products actually end up doing the opposite.

When fructose is metabolised by the liver it goes through a number of steps, of which we’ll only cover a few briefly, just to demonstrate the problem with these diets and their products. The first step is for fructose to be converted into fructose-1-phosphate by the enzyme fructokinase. A by-product of this step is the production of uric acid, you may have heard of uric acid, it’s a crystalline compound that when elevated invades joints contributing to arthritis and it’s most common manifestation gout. This is a problem in itself, but high uric acid levels also inhibit the production of nitric oxide (NO), which is involved in regulating your blood pressure, so hypertension (high blood pressure) is the result. Nitric oxide is also involved in thermogenesis, so, far from helping you lose fat, it actually reduces your ability to burn it.

The next step in fructose metabolism via 3 different pathways all increase de novo lipogenesis (the formation of fat). This in excess contributes to non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), which I’ve written about previously; you can find that article here (http://humanperformanceconsulting-uk.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/timing-is-everything.html)

In addition to the development of NASH, excess de novo lipogenesis also contributes towards the pre-diabetic condition of insulin resistance due to the increased blood levels of Triglycerides and Free Fatty Acids, plus the inflammation caused as a result of the JNK-1 pathway.

Another common claim for these products is that they contain high amounts of antioxidants; possibly, but that’s not always a good thing. Oxidation is a vital component of life, without it, well you wouldn’t be alive. It’s the precise balance of controlled oxidation that is needed, this will become big in the next few years as the knowledge of re-dox reactions and signalling becomes more widespread. When oxidation is uncontrolled, that’s when problems arise.

These products claim to help this situation by providing the antioxidants to quench the reactive oxygen species (ROS or free radicals). Alas, again, in general they usually do the opposite. The metabolism of fructose generates large amounts of free radicals that need to be stabilised by a particular antioxidant, in this case glutathione, which we’ll come back to in a moment.

So I think you can see that already these products put you in real bad shape. But here’s the kicker, they actually reduce your ability to detoxify.

Metabolic detoxification is a specific metabolic pathway, active throughout the human body, that processes unwanted chemicals for elimination. This pathway involves a series of enzymatic reactions that neutralise and solubilise toxins, then assist in transporting them to secretory organs (like the liver or kidneys), so that they can be excreted from the body. It happens via three main steps called phase I, II and III, ending with elimination.

Generally, phase I enzymes begin the detoxification process by chemically transforming lipid soluble compounds into easier to remove water soluble compounds in preparation for phase II detoxification. However, this intermediate product is in many cases more reactive then the original toxin, which makes them potentially more destructive than they once were. Luckily for us, we have phase II; ummm…or we did…

Phase II enzymes modify phase I products to both increase their solubility and also
reduce their toxicity. One of the key chemicals your body uses to perform this trick is glutathione; oops. If you recall, glutathione is being tied up combating the free radicals generated by the metabolism of fructose in the liver.

So in effect by using these products high in fructose to ‘detox’ yourself you’re actually increasing the toxic burden on your body, by increasing one phase of the pathway while simultaneously reducing the activity of another.

Your body is continually detoxifying itself, and if our meddling simian fingers stopped prying for a moment, it would generally achieve this with the exquisite precision that the body has developed over millennia. If you try to push the body, I guarantee, it’ll push back, often in unpleasant ways.

Here’s a simple way to support your body in detoxification and all it takes is to trust Nature, it’s been here a lot longer than we have, and knows what it’s doing. This simple method of detoxification can be summed up in an easy to remember acronym:

JERF (Just Eat Real Food).


Darren Jackson – Human Performance Consulting-UK

Website: hpc-uk.net
Facebook: Human-Performance-Consulting-UK
Twitter: @HPCUK
Blog: humanperformanceconsulting-uk.blogspot.com

What Your Slimming Club Doesn’t Tell You…

'The Metabolic Shift'

The usual piece of advice given by Doctors and other health related professionals in relation to fat loss is to ‘Eat Less and Move More’, which is a way of saying take in fewer Calories, and use more Calories through physical activity. And in all likelihood if you follow this advice you will lose weight; although not necessarily fat. The problem with the ‘Eat Less, Move More’ maxim is that it makes it progressively harder to lose, or even maintain, weight. It creates what is known as a ‘Metabolic Shift’.

‘Move More’

In brief, here’s the way it works. The usual exercise promoted for weight loss is aerobic type exercise, there are many reasons why this has become so, but as you’ll see the idea is actually based on faulty logic. Aerobic activity increases efficiency in utilising energy especially the pathway that uses fat as a fuel. So the more trained this system the more efficiently the body can use fat, and for people whose sports require them to perform for long durations such as distance runners, this is a great adaptation. For fat loss, it’s disastrous.

Let’s use an automotive analogy to see why it’s terrible for fat loss. Take two cars; one being the newest eco-friendly designed model; and the other a huge off-road vehicle the size of a small house. If you wanted to save money on fuel bills, which model would you choose? The obvious answer is the eco-model. Why? Because everything about its design is specifically directed towards efficiency, from its size, to the way the engine produces power. On the same tank of fuel, the eco-model would do a week’s worth of journeys, whereas in the off-roader you may be worried about being able to reach the end of your driveway.

Now substitute a human body for the cars, and substitute fat for petrol. Which model would you choose for fat loss? The ‘off-roader’ of course. It will use many-fold the amounts of fat that the eco-model uses. So why do we get told to train our bodies so that they develop into eco-models? Good question.

‘Eat Less’

Let’s look at the other half of the equation ‘Eat Less’. ‘Eat Less’ again, like ‘Move More’ is based on faulty logic. ‘Eating Less’ is another way of saying take in fewer Calories, which, if you’ve been following HPC-UK for a while, you’ll know that this ‘Calorie concept’ in itself is a fallacy when it comes to Human metabolism; so it’s already on shaky ground. Your body is not merely a static machine; it’s one of the most sophisticated creations in existence, so you shouldn’t really expect it to respond in a simple way to a change in its environment.

Going back to the car analogy, regardless of how much fuel is put into the tank, the car will continue to use the same amount of petrol to fuel its functions. The car doesn’t care if you only put in a days worth amount of fuel, it will continue to burn this fuel in the same way it would as if it had a full tank. The human body doesn’t work this way. If you put less energy into the body, the body will sense this and then make huge adaptations to its function so that it increases the efficiency in fuel usage. Not only does it do this, it will also make changes so that a larger percentage of energy taken into the body will be partitioned towards fat storage as this is the most efficient storage form of energy in the body.

People who have undergone a metabolic shift generally feel cold. This also compromises their immune system so they are more susceptible to chills and infections.

The human body is not a mere machine; it’s a dynamic organism that adapts to its environment. However, the body is still treated, even by very educated individuals that should really know better, as a simple mechanism.

So ‘Eat Less, Move More’ is based on a totally wrong premise, however it is still the most widely used approach for losing weight, and we can see the results of this maxim in others and probably in yourself in the past. The results? Eventually ending up fatter and less able to lose or even maintain weight. I’m sure this wasn’t the result you were after, but in all likelihood it’s the one you got. Why? Regardless of how strongly willed you are, because of the increasingly efficient manner the body operates when asked to reduce energy intake and expend more energy, it becomes only a matter of time, where you can’t realistically starve yourself any further, put in any more time into increasingly longer bouts of exercise or a combination of both. And when you do break, and you will, the body has become so efficient that any excess of food or drop in activity, no matter how miniscule will be cause fat accretion at an alarming rate.

Simply put, once more normal levels of either activity or food intake is resumed the body had adapted to doing ‘more with less’ and promptly stores the excess as fat

Be very careful with the questions you ask your body, as the answers (adaptations) last a loooong time after your temporary change in diet or exercise finishes.

Get Hard

In a recently published study it was found that sildenafil; the active ingredient in Viagra, increased the ‘browning’ of white adipose tissue (WAT). As I’ve shown before (http://humanperformanceconsulting-uk.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/hpc-uk-bitesize-fat-loss-beige-fat.html and http://humanperformanceconsulting-uk.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/hpc-uks-top-tips-for-fat-loss-tip-no9.html and http://humanperformanceconsulting-uk.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/ive-got-chills-theyre-multiplying.html ) the key to controlling bodyfat is in manipulating the Brown Adipose content and activity of your fat tissue to create what are known as ‘Brite’ or ‘Beige’ adipocytes (fat cells).

It was also found that sildenafil reduced the level of inflammation in the fat cells which is heavily involved in Insulin resistance; which in itself prevents the ability to utilise the above (thermogenesis) mechanism to reduce bodyfat.

In Lean for Life these two components are integral areas that are covered throughout the program. The program sets up the conditions to maximise thermogenesis, which when working well, allows you to remain 'lean for life' without any undue stress or difficulty. If you’d like to find out more about developing a body that can remain Lean for Life please use this link: http://www.hpc-uk.net/6.html

Reference:

M. M. Mitschke, L. S. Hoffmann, T. Gnad, D. Scholz, K. Kruithoff, P. Mayer, B. Haas, A. Sassmann, A. Pfeifer, A. Kilic. Increased cGMP promotes healthy expansion and browning of white adipose tissue. The FASEB Journal, 2013; DOI: 10.1096/fj.12-221580