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MIT Researchers Discover "Metabolic Master Switch" To Control Obesity
New submitter ahbond writes: The meme of the chubby nerd alone in the basement may be a thing of the past. Well, at least the chubby part, if recent work at MIT pans out and we're able to use a biological "master switch" to "dial-in" a persons metabolic rate. “Obesity has traditionally been seen as the result of an imbalance between the amount of food we eat and how much we exercise, but this view ignores the contribution of genetics to each individual’s metabolism,” said senior author Manolis Kellis, a professor of computer science and a member of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and of the Broad Institute.
It isn't being ignored; it's part of the equation, and always has been. Metabolic rate acts as a multiplier on the "calories out" part of the equation.
BMR (basal metabolic rate) really doesn't vary much person to person.
Actually, the article is stating precisely the opposite. It states that the BMR is controlled by IRX3 and IRX5, and that this varies from person to person, and thus people have different propensities for fat storage as a result of the state of those genes. They went on to modify the nucleotide in mice, and demonstrated that they had in fact found the regulatory mechanism for the metabolic pathway.
Part of the issue for people trying to lose weight is that their metabolism slows down to avoid burning calories. The body doesn't like giving up calories that it has already stored, and when it has to do so, it basically figures that times are tough, and it doesn't know when they're going to be good again... so it reduces the metabolic rate, and increases storage of excess calories when they do come in. It's thought that this effect may be permanent, but even if it's not, it is certainly a long lasting one, and it's one of the reasons that, even years after losing a large amount of weight, people have a hard time keeping it off (and most fail). Being able to re-tune ones metabolic rate would help overweight and obese people immensely in not only taking that weight off, but keeping it off in the long run. (Of course, this all ties back into the microbiome in the gut as well. The real takeaway from all the new research into obesity is hardly surprising: The human body is complex, and is extraordinarily good at storing and using energy in efficient ways. Modern diets are only about 10,000 years old, and the calorie rich eating of today is less than 100 years old. And our bodies are still evolved to run during boom and bust cycles, where even the boom cycles are pretty thin compared to the energy uptake/use ratios that the average person has daily.)
Original paper, New England Journal of Medicine
http://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10...
Not true. A single data point can invalidate a theory. It just can't "prove" anything.
But invalidate, yes.
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This is factually wrong: read page 742. Starving these research subjects on 600 calorie a day in a controlled environment failed to reduce their weight.
This is 100% bullshit and anyone with even a high school level of understanding of physics knows this.
And they'd be wrong, since you need college level biochemistry to actually understand what's happening. I follow a "proper" regimen of diet and exercise and it works, however there are plenty of others who follow the same kind of workout and diet routine whose BMR is MUCH MUCH higher than mine. Some of them it's so high they complain about the opposite problem, inability to gain weight.