An interesting new study has surfaced from a couple of years ago that runs opposite of all common sense when it comes to diet and eating in general.
The experiment found that in meeses (mice) deactivating two main genes that are part of the “fat-burning” process, can actually improve energy output and assist in lowering diet-caused obesity. These unusual findings might lead to some new roads in weight-loss therapy. Warm-blooded animals like humans need to constantly “burn fat” to maintain stable body temperature and this is where you have to depart from all common sense.
It is presently thought that a person’s fat-burning ability, called thermogenic potential, is linked to risk of obesity; which means that people with extra thermogenic potential are less likely to get obese. As a matter of fact, bodybuilders and others seeking to burn more fat routinely use thermogenic dietary supplements like the caffeine and ephedra combo that helped so many a few years ago until an ignorant, hysterical press finally pushed an even more clueless Congress to ban it for fat loss.
Anyway, in theory, decreasing thermogenesis ought to increase the odds of being overweight or obese, but Leslie Kozak and fellow scientists at Pennington Biomedical Research Center discovered that this might not be totally accurate. The team knocked-out two thermogenic genes in several meeses (mice), called Gdm (glycerol 3-phosphate dehydrogenase) and Ucp1 (mitochondrial uncoupling protein) then they fed the meeses a high-fat regime while raising them at a cool 20 °C (68 °F).
The mice were in fact very resilient to obesity, which was caused by each mouse’s body actually activating their own much less efficient backup heat generators. Missing the Ucp1 & Gdm, genes which were designed for the efficient creation of heat, mouse white fat cells activated alternative, and more inefficient, fat burning mechanisms. In this case the inefficiency was a benefit, as the mice had to burn extra fat than regular to keep warm like burning more wood on a fire.
Notably, after living for 10 weeks at 68°F, the meeses kept these alternate pathways intact even after being moved to 28 °C (82 °F), which suggests that their bodies had adapted to the adjustment. Accordingly, Kozak and fellow
scientists notice, fat burning will not necessarily require making thermogenesis easier; by making it difficult and forcing the body to employ inefficient pathways to keep warm, the identical targets can be achieved.
