
Inflammation halts fat-burning - upen
http://sciencebulletin.org/archives/8780.html
======
nirajshr
There has been increasing evidence of cold stress and fat loss. My
understanding is that cold stress increases the BAT (brown fat) cells, which
helps burn fat for energy source.

I have been reading the articles in this blog:
[http://hypothermics.com/](http://hypothermics.com/). It is an excellent blog
that chronicles many of the findings and the author performs a lot of these
tests on himself.

~~~
Raphmedia
Wouldn't that make people living in the northern hemisphere less likely to
become fat?

~~~
rhino369
People don't spend all that much time outside and when they do, they wrap up
well enough that you don't get very cold.

These hypothetical cold fat burning technqiues, that I've seen, suggest
inducing very mild hypothermia (shivering). That only happens rarely in the
north.

~~~
Raphmedia
> they wrap up well enough that you don't get very cold.

Are you certain of that? It gets really cold here and everyone wears jeans.
Only children wear winter pants casually. Sometime the air itself is cold
enough to get you shivering.

The only time I see people correctly dressed against the cold is when they do
winter sports or go hiking in the woods.

------
merqurio
This is something under active research, and it might have some true behind,
there are some cases in the hospital where you see people doing diet as they
should and not lossing weight at all and at the same time they have some
autoimmune condition.

It wouldn't surprise me to see a true connection found in a couple of years
between autoimmune conditions and weight in a reciprocal way.

~~~
alva
"some cases in the hospital where you see people doing diet as they should and
not lossing weight at all"

would love a link if you have one handy. it seems impossible?

~~~
greglindahl
This is not impossible. In some people, reducing calories (edit: by a lot)
leads their body to decide it's starving, lowering their basal metabolism.
Humans are a complex system with feedback loops.

(edit: note that I'm responding to the 'impossible' comment.)

~~~
wdewind
This is sort of true but not really usefully true. Yes, your metabolic rate
will go down slightly when you eat less food, but the idea of "starvation
mode" comes from a study done in the fifties on extremely underweight people,
who were then put on extremely calorically restricted diets. If the person is
within reasonable weight, or overweight, "starvation mode" simply does not
apply. People who are in this condition cannot lead normal lives due to low
energy, and will frequently have massive health issues due to their body
having to give up on a ton of base functions it's doing every day. It's a very
extreme thing, and does not happen to many people, especially in America.

~~~
davnn
I found an article about the "biggest loser study" pretty interesting a few
months ago, but didn't investige further.

Tldr: It has to do with resting metabolism, which determines how many calories
a person burns when at rest. When the show began, the contestants, though
hugely overweight, had normal metabolisms for their size, meaning they were
burning a normal number of calories for people of their weight. When it ended,
their metabolisms had slowed radically and their bodies were not burning
enough calories to maintain their thinner sizes.

First article about the study:
[http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/05/02/health/biggest-loser-
we...](http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/05/02/health/biggest-loser-weight-
loss.html)

~~~
wdewind
Step 1: Go on diet

Step 2: Lose a bunch of weight

Step 3: Go off diet

Step 4: Regain a bunch of weight.

I'm not trying to be a dick, but I don't think there's a lot going on here
that doesn't make sense. None of the contestants were particularly thin at the
end of the study. Danny Cahill still weighed 191, which is actually pretty
significantly overweight for someone not carrying a lot of muscle mass, which
he wouldn't be at the end of a 7 month crash diet. If you get your body very
very good at using its fat stores you will lower your BMR. The data doesn't
suggest this is permanent or significantly impacted Danny's weight gain, the
data suggests that Danny Cahill did not stick to the diet.

The Biggest Loser is frequently held up as the gold standard for how _not_ to
do things. The weight change is too fast, there is absolutely no support after
its over and they frequently optimize for cardio and fat burning over muscle
building, which in the short term is effective but in the long term
contributes to lowering BMR and making the weight hard to keep off.

But ultimately you have to consider that Danny Cahill was still pretty
unhealthy at the end of the show. None of this is starvation mode, in which
major parts of your life are hugely effected (ie: you would not have the
energy to leave the house).

~~~
mattzito
I'm curious how you rationalize your comments with this:

> What shocked the researchers was what happened next: As the years went by
> and the numbers on the scale climbed, the contestants’ metabolisms did not
> recover. They became even slower, and the pounds kept piling on. It was as
> if their bodies were intensifying their effort to pull the contestants back
> to their original weight.

> Mr. Cahill was one of the worst off. As he regained more than 100 pounds,
> his metabolism slowed so much that, just to maintain his current weight of
> 295 pounds, he now has to eat 800 calories a day less than a typical man his
> size. Anything more turns to fat.

That does suggest there's something more than just "calories in < calories
burned" \- that our bodies are willing to adapt to keep metabolic rates low.

~~~
wdewind
At 191 pounds Cahill was still significantly fatter than he should be, and had
very minimal muscle mass. We know this is true because it is extremely
difficult to not lose muscle on even a small cut, much more so 290lbs over 7
months.

It does not suggest there's something more complicated than calories in <
calories burned, it suggests there's something that is causing him to burn
fewer calories. My explanation is that Cahill had an inactive lifestyle, poor
body composition and was overweight, even after the massive cut. On top of
this, no one is claiming he stuck to the diet, so it makes sense he regained
the weight.

I'm not disputing that your metabolism can down regulate. I am absolutely
disputing that it's a mystery and unfixable. For Cahill he needed to stay on
the diet longer, and he needed to build muscle mass.

------
mjevans
“Obviously, one possible starting point in combatting obesity could be to
inhibit the inflammatory response in abdominal fat while administering cGMP-
stimulating active ingredients,” says Prof. Pfeifer to summarize the findings.

As someone with body fat predominantly in the torso I would love to benefit
from this research.

~~~
xutopia
I am not a doctor and you should probably speak to one before trying this but
there is some information regarding cryolipolysis. Apparently you can get some
benefit from bring temperature of body down a few degrees.

[http://theweek.com/articles/597862/truth-about-freezing-
fat](http://theweek.com/articles/597862/truth-about-freezing-fat)

------
mr_spothawk
"As the researchers have shown in various studies on mice, the widespread
active ingredient sildenafil or a medication against pulmonary hypertension,
for instance, can be used to reduce the number of white fat cells to the
benefit of the brown fat cells and thus accelerate fat burning like a
turbocharger."

isn't Sildenafil Viagra??

~~~
evincarofautumn
According to Wikipedia, it was developed to treat hypertension and angina,
then the researchers discovered a happy (and very marketable) side effect
during trials.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sildenafil#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sildenafil#History)

------
ErikAugust
Isn't there research that shows that ketosis provides an anti-inflammatory
response? Moving into ketosis for fat-loss may be the right thing to do (at
least for a period)...

~~~
antidaily
There is.
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4124736/#S4titl...](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4124736/#S4title)

Ive had pretty good success with Keto. Lost weight, have good energy. Check
out the keto reddit if you want to try it out. Great resource.

~~~
treehau5_
concur on a short term keto diet. I lost basically all my excess body fat. I
struggled a little more with the brain fog, buy after doing it for about a
month, I was able to get back into healthier habits. I wouldn't recommend it
long term unless you have a medical condition that requires it. My nephew had
seizures and he switched to ketogenic diet and his epilepsy calmed from
multiple episodes a day to maybe one a day.

~~~
antidaily
Wow. I also have a nephew with a seizure disorder who switched to a keto-like
diet(!). Though, he's since changed medications and moved on to something
else.

------
anotherarray
This is interestingly related to Dinitrophenol, which is widely used by
bodybuilders:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2,4-Dinitrophenol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2,4-Dinitrophenol)

~~~
johnward
Does in fact work and any aged used as a weight-loss drug for awhile. Highly
toxic so you might die.

------
hbosch
As for ways to keep inflammation down, I _assume_ cold baths and aspirin
aren't exactly "enough" for noticeable effects at the moment.

Are there any more good ways to treat inflammation that would be a good
supplement to exercise?

~~~
gtrubetskoy
Simply (ok it's not so simple, actually) reducing intake of inflammatory food
such sugar in any form, preservatives, coloring, glyphosate, animals treated
with antibiotics, etc. would go a really long way.

~~~
wdewind
I'd go even one step further: simply reducing intake of food period.
Inflammation, short of a specific disease, is pretty rare in people who are
not overweight.

------
monksy
I wonder how effective it would be from a diet perspective if you were to add
things that are anti-inflamitory to your diet. (I.e. Green Tea extract
suppliments)

~~~
copperx
Before anyone gets the idea of supplementing NSAIDs (non-steroidal anti-
inflammatories such as aspirin), please know that the chronic use of NSAIDs
has been found to be related to renal cancer (which is not curable).

~~~
monksy
The idea of people abusing Asprin scares the crap out of me.

------
cphoover
at first I read this as flag-burning and was so confused

------
wdewind
The problem here is what happens when the inflammation goes down? All that fat
that's been stored is still going to be burned as energy assuming one is
eating within a caloric balance.

It's frustrating to read all this research into the mechanism of what causes
fat to be stored short term, because we already know what _really_ causes fat
to be stored long term: eating too much.

We need to be researching the reward systems associated with eating, and we
need to start treating obesity as the mental health issue it is. It's a food
addiction, and what we don't need to understand more deeply is how fat is
stored. What we do need to understand more deeply is why people eat too much
and how to get them to comply to healthier lifestyles. The answers are going
to look a lot like drug addiction (ie: people are self-medicating depression,
anxiety, etc. with food).

~~~
dragonwriter
> All that fat that's been stored is still going to be burned as energy
> assuming one is eating within a caloric balance.

No, if you are eating within caloric balance, the fat will _not_ be burned for
energy.

> we need to start treating obesity as the mental health issue it is.

Obesity is not a "mental health issue". It's a symptom. There may (or may not)
be mental health issues underlying it.

> It's a food addiction

Food addictions are a real thing, and obviously where they exist they can
contribute to obesity. It's also clearly the case that obesity is not simply
food addiction.

> What we do need to understand more deeply is why people eat too much

There's a lot of work that has been done on this.

> The answers are going to look a lot like drug addiction

If you mean "they are going to be very complex sets of environmental, genetic,
and physical and mental health factors that combine differently in different
people, and that often the most effective interventions will be more indicated
by the current state than the root causes in individual history", I'd agree
that it will look a lot like drug addiction. In fact, we _already know_ that
obesity is, in that respect, like drug addiction, so that's just predicting
the present, not future results.

~~~
wdewind
There are not obese people who do not eat too much. They simply do not exist.
Then the question becomes: why do they eat too much? Yes, you are right, it's
a complex answer involving a ton of things. But my point in framing it as a
food addiction is that the issue here is not that there is some kind of
underlying metabolic damage or difference that accounts for obesity, unless
that damage/difference somehow contributes to increasing the desire to eat
more.

If we could somehow get them to simply eat less, the condition would go away.
There are arguments to be made about the mind body connection, and I think
they are real, but the issues here are not that obese people are eating the
same amount of food as non-obese people and that inflammation is causing some
of that energy to be stored as fat. It's ridiculous and misleading for people
who are genuinely trying to change their lives to suggest that small effects
like this are the cause.

Also:

> No, if you are eating within caloric balance, the fat will not be burned for
> energy.

Fat is constantly being stored and burned as energy even within a caloric
balance. You cannot store fat longterm without at _some point_ eating at a
caloric surplus.

~~~
creepydata
So I was always very thin. Never cared about what I ate. Kept a very, very
steady weight for a decade naturally without conscious effort on my part. I
then went on a medication that has weight gain as a known side effect. When my
doctor gave it to me she said "just don't eat extra."

My diet did not change a bit. I didn't feel extra hungry.

I gained a massive amount of fat and I gained it extremely fast. Three months
later I was clinically obese. I then paid extra attention to my diet. Started
micromanaging my calories, weighing food, gave up 99% of junk food and all
alcohol.

I gained more weight.

I dropped my calories down to 1000 calories a day and started losing weight.
But it was basically an uphill battle to keep that up. That's not living, you
try it. I thought about food all day. If I started eating even a little more
I'd gain again.

I gave up and went off the drug. My weight is going down now but it's
extremely slow going. I don't know if I am capable of being my former weight.

I certainly am not not ever was addicted to food. The doctor assumed weight
gain had to be caused by extra food intake. It was not.

Sure you can say "rah, rah, 99% of obesity cases aren't drug induced." That is
true, but my experience shows that people can be physiologically different. Or
there may be something in the environment that is triggering abnormal fat
storage. Who knows? But it can't be as simple as "food addiction." Food
addiction can be a cause or maybe even a symptom but it's not the be all end
all. Humans are much more complicated than that.

~~~
wdewind
I can't really respond to an anecdote in any kind of useful way. There are
simply too many factors that could effect this. What I can say is that the
data does not support what you are claiming. This doesn't mean what you are
claiming is incorrect, it means nutritional science is very very difficult and
we don't have good evidence that supports your claim.

Right now there is not reason to think obesity happens outside of a caloric
surplus, and there is a fair amount of basic science that supports that view.
If that view were not true, it would invalidate many things that we think are
true about the physical world.

That being said, while calories-in/calories-out is basically inarguable, there
are many things going on that can effect calories-out even if calories-in
remain the same. Body composition is one thing. I could definitely imagine
medications that are catabolic leading to decreased muscle mass and increased
fat storage. But I still don't think this would account for a massive change
in bodyweight, not one that would make the difference between obese and not
obese.

