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Old 08-12-21, 03:37 PM  
adawn
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Post NYTimes Article: "What We Think We Know About Metabolism May Be Wrong"

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/12/h...ght-aging.html

Science magazine article abstract:
https://science.sciencemag.org/looku...cience.abe5017

"Metabolic research is expensive, and so most published studies have had very few participants. But the new study’s principal investigator, Herman Pontzer, an evolutionary anthropologist at Duke University, said that the project’s participating researchers agreed to share their data. There are more than 80 co-authors on the study. By combining efforts from a half dozen labs collected over 40 years, they had sufficient information to ask general questions about changes in metabolism over a lifetime."

Central findings:

4 periods of life when it comes to metabolism

1. Birth to 1 year - Peak (interestingly though, baby shares its mom's metabolic rate for the 1st month)

2. Age 1 to 20 - Metabolic rate slows gradually approx 3% per year

3. Age 20 to 60 - Holds steady

4. After age 60 - Metabolic rate declines approx 0.7% a year resulting in a 20% decline by age 95.

Other things of interest:

Individuals can of course vary by 25% plus or minus the average metabolic rate but they are outliers.

Since heart, liver, kidney, and brain "account for 65% of resting metabolic rate...[a] slower metabolism after age 60...may mean that crucial organs are functioning less well as people age."

Sorry I can't type more but we have been without internet for almost 48 hours due to storms last night and it took me forever just to do this post via my cellphone.
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Old 08-13-21, 09:57 AM  
frogribbit
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Very interesting!
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Old 08-13-21, 11:17 AM  
DCW
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I guess it IS what I am eating!!!
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Old 08-13-21, 12:15 PM  
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Darn it, you can't read the NYT article without a login.
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Old 08-13-21, 12:34 PM  
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Interesting info. Thanks for typing that out. I can’t access The NY Times article or the complete abstract.

It says metabolism holds steady between age 20-60. I wonder how menopause fits into that. I always thought it was different for men and women.
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Old 08-13-21, 01:15 PM  
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Leonana View Post
Interesting info. Thanks for typing that out. I can’t access The NY Times article or the complete abstract.

It says metabolism holds steady between age 20-60. I wonder how menopause fits into that. I always thought it was different for men and women.
"Women have slower metabolisms than men. That’s why they have a harder time controlling their weight. Menopause only makes things worse, slowing women’s metabolisms even more."

"All wrong, according to a paper published Thursday in Science. Using data from nearly 6,500 people, ranging in age from 8 days to 95 years, researchers discovered that there are four distinct periods of life, as far as metabolism goes. They also found that there are no real differences between the metabolic rates of men and women after controlling for other factors."

The NYT article at least doesn't mention anything more about menopause other than that researchers were expecting women's metabolisms to slow down once they began menopause so were surprised when they didn't see that.

My mom was recently telling me about a podcast she was listening too and I think the guest must have been the same researcher because when I did a search on my library's online science research data for "metabolism," one of the results was this article from February (I'm able to access the full article via my library):

https://www.newscientist.com/article...-and-exercise/

I recognized it right away because I remembered the part my mom was telling me about where Pontzer studied a "modern hunting and gathering community" in Tanzania.

The 7 myths he disputes in the New Scientist article are:

1. Exercise burns through calories and boosts metabolism
2. Exercise will make you lose weight
3. Your workout programme isn't succeeding unless you are losing weight
4. Calories don't matter
5. Humans evolved to eat a Paleo diet
6. A slow metabolism dooms you to obesity
7. Obesity and weight gain are a sign of personal failure

Here are the parts I found most interesting:

From Myth 1:

"Hadza men log 19,000 steps each day hunting, and gathering wild honey, while women log 12,000 steps collecting wild tubers and berries, often with a child on their back in a sling. Yet despite doing about five times more physical activity each day than the average for Western lifestyles, we found that Hadza men and women burn the same number of daily calories as sedentary office workers in industrialised populations."

"And your new workout routine? It will be subjected to the same metabolic adjustment. Daily expenditures measured for participants in exercise studies routinely increase at the beginning of a new workout regimen, but those gains diminish over time. Their bodies adapt..."

From Myth 2:

"Weight loss often starts off well at the beginning of a new exercise regime, but it fades over time, so that a year or so later, the weight lost is a vanishing fraction of what we would expect from all the calories burned through working out."

"The reason for this is frustratingly simple: when you burn more calories, you eat more calories. You might not mean to, of course, but that is the problem. The complex systems working subconsciously to regulate your hunger and satiety do an exceptional job of matching energy intake to expenditure."

From Myth 3:

"Our bodies are built to move, and there are good reasons why the Hadza avoid heart disease and diabetes, despite the fact that they burn the same amount of calories as sedentary people. Regular exercise keeps our hearts healthy, our muscles strong and our minds sharp, especially as we age."

"Intriguingly, recent studies suggest that the metabolic adjustments that frustrate weight loss are a big reason why exercise is so good for us....it seems our bodies respond to increased daily activity by reducing the energy expended on other tasks. For example, immune systems quieten down, reducing inflammation, which is important because we know that inflammation is a serious risk factor for cardiovascular disease and a range of other health problems."

Going to skip the rest of the myths since I don't want to quote too much, plus I don't want to get too much into calories, diet, nutrition, etc.

I wish my library had digital access to Science magazine but alas it does not. That article is titled, "Daily energy expenditure through the human life course," and was published this month with Pontzer as the lead author.

(BTW, they finally hooked our cable line back up last night!)
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Old 08-13-21, 01:24 PM  
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Wow, that is really interesting! Thanks for posting all of it. After reading all of that, I better get up and do my workout lol.
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Old 08-13-21, 01:32 PM  
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There's already 500+ comments on the NYT article but in reading a few of them, I noticed I left out one important quote from the article that someone in the comments sections points out:

"But the findings’ implications for public health, diet and nutrition are limited for the moment because the study gives 'a 30,000-foot view of energy metabolism,' said Dr. Samuel Klein, who was not involved in the study and is director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. He added, 'I don’t think you can make any new clinical statements' for an individual. When it comes to weight gain, he says, the issue is the same as it has always been: People are eating more calories than they are burning."

I debated whether I should leave out the last sentence about calories in vs. out. I don't want to get into a diet debate but felt it would leave things too ambiguous/general to cut off Klein's quote right before that statement for people who don't have access to the full NYT article when I don't think Klein intends to be general/ambiguous on that particular matter.
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Old 08-13-21, 03:22 PM  
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It validates how I have felt about exercise- moderate exercise works great for keeping me fit and healthy and I don't need to do extreme/hardcore/bootcamp/no excuse type workouts. Also validates my lifelong calories in/out personal philosophy.
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Old 08-13-21, 03:53 PM  
Leonana
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by adawn View Post
There's already 500+ comments on the NYT article but in reading a few of them, I noticed I left out one important quote from the article that someone in the comments sections points out:

"But the findings’ implications for public health, diet and nutrition are limited for the moment because the study gives 'a 30,000-foot view of energy metabolism,' said Dr. Samuel Klein, who was not involved in the study and is director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. He added, 'I don’t think you can make any new clinical statements' for an individual. When it comes to weight gain, he says, the issue is the same as it has always been: People are eating more calories than they are burning."

I debated whether I should leave out the last sentence about calories in vs. out. I don't want to get into a diet debate but felt it would leave things too ambiguous/general to cut off Klein's quote right before that statement for people who don't have access to the full NYT article when I don't think Klein intends to be general/ambiguous on that particular matter.
I'm glad you added it. I have to admit, I agree with him. But I guess how we get there varies by the person.
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