
Caffeine attenuates high-fat-high-sucrose lipogenesis and body fat accumulation - bookofjoe
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1756464619305705?via%3Dihub
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firethief
Follow-up question that comes to mind: what happens to the fats and sugars
when they don't get "accumulated"? Do they hang around in the blood,
temporarily raising blood sugar and triglycerides? If so, how bad is that, if
you do it frequently?

IIUC, obesity is bad partly because it's a sign of excess caloric nutrients in
the body and therefore chronically high blood sugar and triglycerides (and
partly for other reasons, like inflammatory signalling by fat tissues). I
don't know the relative significance of these different factors, but I have to
wonder if this effect of caffeine is hiding one obvious sign of problems while
exacerbating the problems themselves.

ETA: it looks like they found that caffeine also had blood-triglyceride-
reducing effects, partly by reducing lipogenesis. I would think this would
shift all of the burden to blood sugar. I don't see anything about blood sugar
levels.

ETA: I did some further research. Caffeine does acutely raise blood sugar
levels[1], but caffeine intake is inversely-correlated with T2D[2]. The reason
doesn't seem to be known yet, and I don't know if anyone's ruled out the
obvious confounder that people who drink more coffee drink less Coke.

1:
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014067366...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673667915930)

2:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15998896](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15998896)

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dnautics
re ETA2: if it acutely raises blood sugar levels by pulling it out of storage
cells, then it makes sense that the baseline chronic sugar levels would be
lower, by mass balance; and the development of T2D is more dependent on
chronic blood sugar levels, not acute swings. Not saying this is the
mechanism, it is just that the correlation should _not_ be suprising.

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scythe
It may as well be noted that plenty of people who drink coffee (or mate) get
fat.

But this is not a _refutation_. Nutrition is confusing because we’re not used
to looking at lots of tiny effects adding up to something large. (Eg. High
saturated fat intake causes about a 20% increase in heart disease mortality.)

Just like many other effects, this one is small and requires statistics to
prove.

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notadoc
If you consume more calories than you use, you gain weight. Fat accumulation
or loss is simple physics. Caffeine may have some small impact as do other
stimulants, but often you see people consuming caffeine with large amounts of
sugar or carbohydrates and rarely do you see those same people immediately
jumping rope for 3 hours to burn off the equivalent excess calories.

~~~
hrktb
> If you consume more calories than you use, you gain weight.

People throw around this idea as if it was simple.

Just the concept of calorie, which is bound to water temperature changes, is
at most a vague second or third order approximation of a body’s energy intake.
Petrol would be of super high calorie for instance, but it makes no sense for
the body.

We have no clear idea of what any food gives as energy to a body, nor how each
body reacts differently to any food, nor how much of that goes out, when that
potentially stored energy is used in what amount (would CO2 production
measurement help in this regard ? even if so but then it might be get rid of
in unexpected ways)

So while the in/out idea may not be completely wrong, it’s effectively useless
to anyone seriously thinking about diets.

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AnimalMuppet
I'm mostly agreeing with you, but I think you may be going slightly too far.

If you _absorb_ more calories than your metabolism burns, then you gain
weight. Variables are:

\- Calorie content of food.

\- Ability of your body to absorb those calories. This includes what form the
calories are in (petrol, obviously, doesn't work), but also may include your
gut biome, and perhaps other person-specific issues.

\- Your activity level (not just exercise, but non-exercise physical movement
as well).

\- What your food does to your metabolism.

Sure, if you eat too much of the wrong things, it hurts. If you exercise, it
helps. But it's much more complicated than that.

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JshWright
...in rats.

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duelingjello
Well, caffeine isn’t a “free” or “magical” solution to weight loss and it’s
obvious that most stimulants prevent weight gain because they activate the
fight-or-flight response by stimulating the SNS, which depresses the feed-and-
breed response that is activated with the SNS is calm. Thus, you can lose
weight with stimulants (nicotine, caffeine, ephedra and so on), but you’ll be
stressed, have higher blood pressure, heart rate and cortisol levels and not
be thinking as clearly. Fasting or putting the fork down sooner maybe a better
strategy than looking for a “magic” ligand to let people eat as much as they
want. T

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proc0
So we're finally ok caffeine? I feel it is now almost as unavoidable as sugar
in commercial food products (in that many products use it as a secondary
'enhancer' of some kind).

~~~
scarejunba
It's a common nootropic and enhances brain function. It's only the withdrawal
effects that make it undesirable. Personally, I get a hell of a more useful
effect from an -afinil.

~~~
blfr
The major downside of caffeine is tolerance.

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ramenmeal
I wish I could gain a tolerance for caffeine. Getting a coffee at a cafe is
such a nice experience but I end up getting panic attacks from too much of
caffeine.

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words3425434
The worst part about caffeine induced panic attacks for me is the
unpredictability. I can drink a Coke/Pepsi or two occasionally with no
problems, but I had a sweet tea this afternoon and am now completely jittery.

~~~
thelazydogsback
Maybe it was the 80 grams of sugar :)

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chiefalchemist
What about caffeine and cortisol? Aren't stimulants a proxy for a stress-esque
response from the body? Wouldn't that trigger weight gain? Or at least inhibit
weight loss?

~~~
cheald
Cortisol is a catabolic hormone - it helps the body break down tissue for
easier access to energy. It just also provokes the hunger impulse, and if
you're not paying attention to it, you can overeat in response. If you don't
alter your intake, on the net, increased cortisol should increase weight loss.
Additionally, caffeine itself is an appetite suppressant, and is slightly
thermogenic, for even more fat burning power.

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Gustomaximus
attenuate: reduce the force, effect, or value of.

~~~
The_rationalist
It's an example of a basic mainstream word in a lang (French) not being well-
known in another (English) It would be useful to find a website that aggregate
words with such property because heuristically if one word is well known in
one language, it's probably a useful one, and the fact that your language
hasn't yet assimilated it is contingent.

~~~
Eric_WVGG
speaking of the French, I bet the effects for nicotine are similar if not
amplified. Say what you will about premature aging, but those coffee-and-
cigarettes types cut a lean profile.

~~~
eric_h
I’m guessing one factor in that is the appetite suppression effects of both. I
heard a story (though perhaps apocryphal) about tobacco use increasing during
the Great Depression specifically because of that side effect.

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EpicEng
This is a bit of a rant, so apologies in advance, but I just... don't care.
After nearly 40 years on Earth I've learned that, if you consumer in
moderation and mostly avoid the bad stuff (simple sugars/carbs) you'll be
fine.

I'm not saying we shouldn't study this stuff. I'm not saying it isn't
valuable. I understand why it's a difficult field to experiment in.

But I still don't care. I ignore health news like the plague. I'm 36, fit,
Lowe body far, can lift a fair bit of weight. Moderation and a little common
sense really does work here.

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daniel_iversen
Does anyone have opinions on this? And why wouldn’t they test with coffee or
regular black tea because there’s a lot more people drinking that I assume?

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Pete_D
They also tested with synthetic caffeine and coffee-extracted caffeine, but
didn't find much difference. Page 6 of the study has a graph, and this
excerpt:

> 3.2. Caffeine, independently of its origin, abrogated lipid accumulation via
> regulation of lipogenic genes in vitro

> Mate tea and fractionated caffeine and decaffeinated samples were assayed
> for their anti-adipogenic potential in 3T3-L1 adipocytes (Fig. 3). Synthetic
> caffeine (SC) and caffeine extracted (CO2 super-critical extraction) from
> coffee (CC) were also evaluated. All samples but DM [decaffeinated mate]
> significantly (p < 0.05) reduced lipid accumulation (from 20.6 to 40.7%)
> (Fig. 3A).

We already knew caffeine had various effects on fat metabolism, so the most
interesting part of the study is probably the "but not other phytochemicals in
mate tea" part.

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abledon
Anyone in a social group that all take nootropics, but each one of you benefit
more from different compounds? I’m curious how 1 herb/molecule is really
effective on one persons mood/focus but has almost 0 effect on the next guy

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TruPo_Science
One issue I have with this is that the CO2 extraction is not only going to
pull caffeine out, but many other potential compounds. Their decaff mate
probably doesn't have caffeine, but is most likely missing many other organic
compounds.

