Metabolic Chaos

Notes

 

Your body takes glucose in via an insulin receptor. Enzymes then alter the chemical structure of the glucose to generate 4 units of energy.

At the end of the process you have an end product called pyruvate. Back at the very beginning of life, that was the extent of our metabolism.

Usain Bolt is a freak, but a master of glycolysis. When you are doing a 15 second interval on the ropes, it’s all glycolysis. When you hit that ‘wall’ is where glycolysis slows down due to an accumulation of lactate.

He’s the fastest man in the world not because he has a faster top speed than anyone else, but because he has better speed endurance than anyone else.

London Olympics he ran the same as everyone else for 50m , then won by a distance simply because he didn’t slow down.

Somewhere along the way, protobacteria got into the cell and began to metabolise pyruvate, developing a symbiotic relationship with the cell. A parasite became an organelle. They used the krebs cycle to create 32 ATP in the presence of oxygen which was beginning to form in our atmosphere.

Although mitochondria are more efficient they are much slower, glycolysis is fast. When glycolysis is turning over at 100% it is producing far more pyruvate than the mitochondria can handle. So an enzyme called LDH converts pyruvate into lactate.

When you are in a situation where carbohydrates are plentiful, your body needs to clear those glucose molecules because they can’t stay in the blood.

This increases the amount of activity down the chain. As store of energy increase the rate of conversion decreases. Eventually the Kreb’s cycle stops accepting pyruvate at the same rate as it did before meaning that glucose has nowhere to go.

The process is contained.

But there is still too much glucose in the blood so where can it go?

It gets converted into glycogen by glycogen synthase and is stored in the liver (70g stabilising blood glucose brain maintenance), and the muscles (emergency on site usage 200g).

So then that gets filled, because chances are you didn’t have an empty tank to start with

Where next?

The accumulation of fat is a result of excessive energy availability, and occurs as a protective method against damage. Fortunately the production of TGs is not unregulated an can only happen at a certain rate.

This results in many more glucose molecules sitting in the blood. In an effort to reduce this, your pancreas secretes more insulin.

Then your cells become more insulin resistant, because they still don’t want any glycation damage.

The liver converts excess glucose into triglycerides and inserts them into the blood stream in the form of VLDL ad LDL’s. The are quickly taken up by Adipose tissue. The rest of the sugar sits in the blood stream as more and more insulin is pumped out to counteract it. This is why we don’t recommend a controlled carbohydrate diet to those who have been used to eating a carb based diet and are overweight.

So why do people who eat a lot report low energy levels?

It’s a common complaint which makes no sense, why would someone who is clearly consuming an excessive amount of energy not be able to us it?

They cannot access their food. The constant drip feed of carbohydrates into their body keeps insulin constantly high and keeps the metabolism shifting their food to fat rather than it being useful.

They cannot access the fat to use because HSL is sensitive to insulin and so it cannot release any of the energy.

They also become dependent on exogenous fuel for the maintenance of blood glucose. If you can’t release it from your liver or your fat, then your blood sugar drops.