Energy-based model explains how chronic stress transforms into disease over time

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030645302200292X

by andrewstetsenko • 2 years ago

186 55 2 years ago

sciencedirect.com

bloated50482• 2 years ago

Does it mean exercising regularly does the same?

mattmaroon4• 2 years ago

Exercise seems to stimulate the mechanisms it’s claiming stress depresses, so probably no.

bloated50482• 2 years ago

But exercise does use lots of energy. Probably more than stress.

sbdhzjd• 2 years ago

My understanding is yes.

However moderate exercise (and stress!) stimulates the body to activate trash/repair/rebuild mechanisms which improve health overall.

EDIT:

For example, aerobic exercise stimulates capillary growth lowering pressure required for blood flow. Periodic, moderate fasting triggers the elimination of accumulated fats which might have toxins built up in them (or have oxidized) Healthy, emotional stress teaches us to deal with inevitable tragedies.

mattmaroon4• 2 years ago

So the upshot is that your body is using its energy to deal with stress rather than other problems?

imjonse• 2 years ago

It is about a biological/physiological model based on energy consumption when stressed, not the machine learning energy-based models championed by Yann LeCunn.

omani• 2 years ago

doesn't matter what model you use to explain it.

cortisol.

too much of it or too regularly opens the door to many diseases.

manmal• 2 years ago

Are there any proxy markers we can use to model cortisol, right now? Like HRV or simply continuous heart rate monitoring?

mojosam• 2 years ago

it sounds like the authors are suggesting that additional energy usage caused by stress can, in isolation from other causes, be a mechanism for disease. But that doesn’t make much sense:

  - our metabolisms are adaptable, so why wouldn’t this increase in energy use simply be offset by an increase in energy production? It can’t be that people who are stressed in general aren’t getting enough energy, because that would correlate stress with weight loss, but I would argue that there are plenty of overweight people with stress.

  - if the argument is that an increased metabolism by itself is the culprit, then why wouldn’t people with higher metabolisms in general — like anyone who exercises regularly, but certainly athletes — not also experience more disease? If your answer is “that’s different for some reason”, then that means that increased energy usage and metabolism is not by itself the cause, which suggests it may not be the cause at all.

Furthermore, even granting the supposition that stress requires increased energy usage, their abstract doesn’t make much sense:

  - “Living organisms have a limited capacity to consume energy.” Okay, so that means that no matter how stressed we get, there’s a cap to the energy we can use. But how is that relevant, since it also applies to exercise or other energy utilization by the body? Why does a limited capacity to consume energy only apply to stress?

  - “Overconsumption of energy by [stress handling] brain-body processes leads to … excess energy expenditure above the organism’s optimum”. Thats basically a tautology, but more importantly, it doesn’t tell us that energy consumption above “optimal” — which seems extremely vague — is a bad thing.

  - “In turn, [excess energy consumption above the optimal] accelerates physiological decline in cells, laboratory animals, and humans, and may drive biological aging”. So that “may” is a pretty good reason to dismiss this, since again why wouldn’t this lead to increased disease among athletes or anyone with higher metabolism?

  - “Mechanistically, the energetic restriction of growth, maintenance and repair processes leads to the progressive wear-and-tear of molecular and organ systems” Maybe, but why are they energetically restricted if metabolism has increased to provide more energy? And again, why don’t we then see increased disease and aging in anyone who exercises regularly, since that exercise not only uses energy that restricts growth, maintenance and repair, but exercise causes more need for repair.

I think the core problem is that it’s all going to boil down to how you define “optimum”, which the authors conveniently don’t. The authors are going to be left with defining “optimum” as meaning “that energy usage which does not cause disease”. But that’s no different than simply claiming “stress causes disease”, so this model describes nothing, since it tells us nothing about how to identify non-optimum energy usage or how non-optimum energy usage causes disease.

h4l• 2 years ago

Humans have a massive capacity to vary energy use. Highly trained endurance athletes like professional road cyclists and triathletes can average 3x or more the typical daily energy expenditure of a non-athlete on a long term basis. The idea that psychological stress can overwhelm the body's ability to produce energy does not seem credible to me.

anon848736286• 2 years ago

Those people have trained very deliberately over years to reach that level of performance, on top of an innate genetic disposition.

Undoubtedly, in absolute terms they have a higher capacity to withstand the negative physical effects of psychosocial stress as described in the paper, precisely because of these physiological adaptations.

If regular people trained themselves to deal with stress then they would have a higher capacity too.

The paper is referring to the maximum capacity of a particular organism at a particular moment in time. It doesn't assert that the capacity is uniform across a species or doesn't change over time.

anon848736286• 2 years ago

Okay, so that means that no matter how stressed we get, there’s a cap to the energy we can use. But how is that relevant, since it also applies to exercise or other energy utilization by the body? Why does a limited capacity to consume energy only apply to stress?

It doesn't. That limited capacity to consume energy applies to exercise, brain activity, thermogenesis, digestion, and every other biological process as well. It is a fundamental aspect of cellular biology and a major focus in the field of exercise physiology.

Fitness training is the very slow and deliberate process of pushing these limits tiny percentages higher.

I suggest you build some practical and theoretical knowledge of the field before dismissing the paper.

authorfly2• 2 years ago

I absolutely don't doubt you but can you provide some accessible education resources or some sports science/biochemistry papers for the claim around "That limited capacity to consume energy applies to exercise, brain activity, thermogenesis, digestion, and every other biological process as well. It is a fundamental aspect of cellular biology and a major focus in the field of exercise physiology." ?

What energy are we talking about here exactly? ATP?

hammock3• 2 years ago

This paper reminds me of the “insight” / factoid that all mammals are basically born with the same rough number of heartbeats, and then they die. Smaller animals like mice have shorter lifespans and faster heartbeats. Larger ones like whales and elephants have slower heartbeats and longer lives.

The humorous (and obviously false, though apparently not if this paper is out there) corollary is that any exercise and non-sedentary lifestyle means you lose years of your life

kelipso• 2 years ago

I think the theory is that exercise has many other benefits that make up for the increased energy usage.

mrtesthah• 2 years ago

Naked mole rats live over 30 years, because they have additional copies of a gene known to protect against DNA damage.

findthewords• 2 years ago

Why don't we try doing that? Multiple backups sounds like a no-brainer "fix".

fnordpiglet2• 2 years ago

This is the battery “theory,” and is obviously untrue from all evidence collected. Exercise and specifically improvement of VO2max, which is the bodies ability to pump and process a volume of blood and oxygen in a period of time, are some of the strongest predictors of life and health span. A lack of exercise also transpires to significantly increase global inflammation in the body - in fact regular exercise forces the body to adapt to a new homeostatic use of calories away from random inflammation to conserve daily caloric expenditure towards that exercise. There’s no evidence to support the battery “theory,” despite certain anti science politicians popularizing it.

alexey-salmin2• 2 years ago

This is the battery “theory,” and is obviously untrue from all evidence collected. Exercise and specifically improvement of VO2max, which is the bodies ability to pump and process a volume of blood and oxygen in a period of time, are some of the strongest predictors of life and health span.

Exercise and specifically improvement of VO2max also decrease your average heart rate, so it's quite aligned with the battery theory.

TrainedMonkey• 2 years ago

OG study that found a roughly same number of heartbeats was only concerned with averages - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9316546/ . Interestingly humans are outliers with 2-3x the expected number of heartbeats. The way the data was presented always gave me a strong "everything looks linear when plotted on a log scale with big marker" vibe... however it could be totally possible that there is some correlation there.

Maybe evolutionary, there is optimal amount of time for organisms to survive relative to their size. Organism size, in turn, correlates with heart size and heart size correlates with how fast it beats. Probably totally missing the mark, but if it was true, it would be interesting to look into why there are outliers.

Anywho, I find it humorous to think about a battery theory car analogy - "every car has a preset number of miles and maintenance would decrease usable lifespan of the car because you need to drive to the mechanic".

mcoliver• 2 years ago

Haven't done the math but maybe they aren't so disconnected. If I can trade off an elevated heart rate of 170 for an hour every day or two in exchange for dropping my resting heartbeat from 70 to 50, I should end up with more years to use those finite heartbeats. As with most things in life it's about balance. Extremes and absolutes in most everything tend to result in poor outcomes. You don't want to be sitting 24/7 or running 24/7.

hammock3• 2 years ago

Starting with 60 RHR:

+120 bpm for 60min = -7200 beats off your life -20 bpm for 23 hours = +27600 beats added to your life Net: +20400 beats, or 6.8 hrs added, every day you keep it up

Obviously some factors missing in that, you can't live forever.. but back of the envelope it nets positive not negative

hammock3• 2 years ago

Do the people downvoting my comment think I believe in this theory, or is there another reason?

“Factoid” means untrue by definition. I thought it an interesting novelty

chiefalchemist2• 2 years ago

Down voting on HN on HN seems to be a sign of "this idea breaks the model I have in my head, and my biases tell me I can't be mistaken."

jgneff2• 2 years ago

I think this study is related to two books I read this summer: Burn, by Herman Pontzer, presents his "constrained energy expenditure hypothesis," and Exercised, by Daniel E. Lieberman, discusses his "costly repair hypothesis."

Together, they try to explain why exercise can force your body to stop using its energy to destroy itself (inflammation, autoimmune diseases) and instead use its energy to restore itself (releasing antioxidants, repairing damage).

nobrains• 2 years ago

When I search (amazon, google, and other searches) for one these books, the other also shows up as a very close result. And vice versa as well.

azeirah• 2 years ago

Kurtzgesagt had a video about this very recently too. About calory expenditure.

discordance• 2 years ago

This one: https://youtu.be/vSSkDos2hzo

profstasiak• 2 years ago

this book is pseudoscience though. https://mynutritionscience.com/p/exercise-weight-loss

there are more good critique online, sorry busy right now to find it.

But please don't spread this myth.

jgneff2• 2 years ago

I enjoyed reading both books, but especially Herman Pontzer's stories in Burn about his time with the Hadza people in Africa. The study is based in part on his research (Pontzer, 2018, Pontzer et al., 2021). His hypothesis does seem to be controversial and counter-intuitive.

Thank you for the link to the nutritionist's article. I'll read it with interest.

QuantumGood• 2 years ago

One formula for getting a publisher interested in your book is claiming new data that intuitively makes sense. Consultants will list things that many people believe that contradict established science or wisdom, and then there is a search for data that can be gathered into a counter-argument to find a book topic that a publisher will put marketing dollars into.

Pontzer contends “[exercise] just won’t do much for your weight" because "we naturally compensate for exercise by reducing non-exercise activity expenditure (NEAT) and resting metabolic rate (RMR)". That excercisers exercise less when they're not specifically exercising.

Ward says Pontzer underestimates exercise's role, misinterprets energy compensation and overemphasis anecdotal evidence, and cherry-picks data by choosing studies that primarily show minimal changes in Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) and weight loss with increased physical activity.

Ward points to a broader range of studies that demonstrate significant increases in TDEE and weight loss in individuals who engage in moderate to high levels of exercise, arguing that this evidence indicates exercise can be a substantial factor in energy expenditure and weight management.

Ward specifically points out

  Pontzer told me “the distinction between confounders and mediators is largely conceptual” and “They would be treated the same in stats analysis such as the one used”, but any statistician would argue the differences are defined and vitally important. Confounders interfere with the causal pathway we’re interested in; mediators are part of the causal pathway we’re interested in. Hence, when statistically adjusting and removing the effect of different variables, we do this for confounders, not mediators – thus removing the interference.

photochemsyn• 2 years ago

Link to full paper:

https://www.picardlab.org/uploads/7/7/8/4/77845210/2022_bobb...

Lots of interesting stuff about mitochondrial allostatic load. It's essentially a Goldilocks problem - the car that's never driven breaks down quickly when you take it out for a drive, but if you're constantly pushing the accelerator and slamming the brakes, the car's lifetime is cut in half. The paper seems to focus on social and psychological factors that unnecessarily increase stress:

"From this energetic perspective, the evolution of likes and dislikes, feelings and emotions, and approach/withdrawal behaviors arose to minimize the energetic cost of life."

Case example: Someone just asked me about my holiday season plans and my blood pressure probably went through the roof... I think I'm going to send them this paper.

krackers• 2 years ago

Diseases like chronic fatigue syndrome are thought to be the result of mitochondrial dysfunction, right? Maybe that also fits in here.

tmshapland• 2 years ago

So what do you do about stress? How do you recognize it's happening? I found this part informative:

"Stress reactivity occurs specifically in situations that diminish one’s control and where the prospect of being negatively evaluated, rejected, and/or shamed are contextually manipulated (Dickerson et al., 2004)."

I find I get the most stressed when I'm excited about a new challenge -- a new work project, seeing a path to achieving a goal I've been working towards for a while. When I start to feel too excited (or in the framework of this paper, I start to expend too much energy and my heart rate is elevated thinking about all I want to do to overcome the challenge), I can generally reign in the stress by reminding myself that failure happens, my peers will understand it, and I don't have complete control over anything anyway.

vmasto• 2 years ago

Stress most times doesn't reveal itself like that. What you're describing is short term excitement and perhaps anxiety.

Stress is a silent killer. It's basically being mostly unhappy, feeling unfulfilled and trapped. It's a spectrum that can range from simply being unhappy to being deeply depressed.

diskevich• 2 years ago

Stress management isn't just about understanding the problem—it's about actionable solutions.

Exercise, even a brief walk, reduces cortisol and boosts mood-enhancing endorphins.

Meditation and mindfulness, once seen as trendy, are now scientifically proven to rewire the brain for better stress handling.

Nutrition plays a surprising role; omega-3-rich foods like salmon can lower stress hormones.

Quality sleep, especially deep sleep, allows the brain to reset and repair.

Finally, don't underestimate the power of social support. Sharing your struggles with others can significantly lighten your mental load.

chiefalchemist2• 2 years ago

Agree, with all in full sans the last one. Of course, if you're struggling, seek support.

We all have bad days or even bad weeks, life happens and often it's best to learn this. The current fad (?) of "I'm going to experess my non-positive feelings as they are all the time" gives too much weight to what are normal passing moments.

I don't want to say being a hypochondriac is normalized (else I might get canceled) but... Words, they create worlds. It's important to be mindful of what we choose to create.

Belief drives behavior, and when allowed to perpetuate the victim mentality can cause unnecessary (semi) permanent damage. It's perfectly normal to experience some pain. Don't make more of it than necessary.

gregwebs2• 2 years ago

Lets agree for the sake of argument that if the body does not have enough energy to do what it needs that causes harm. Then why not eat more food to deal with the problem?

I think this model is missing a critical component: the bodies ability to use energy effectively is limited by having the proper nutrients available. The easiest example being a deficiency of B vitamins since they are used for energy metabolism. Many other factors can impair energy metabolism and just eating more will not fix the situation.

Whereas with this model we have statements that seem too over-simplified:

The organism’s energy consumption capacity is biologically limited

This seems overstated- we know that certain athletes can consume 2x or even 3x a resting amount to support physical exertion- the human body seems designed to be able to produce more power for physical exertion when needed by consuming more energy (in addition to making long-term adaptations to make energy usage more efficient).

I also think that readers of this paper may take away an understated understanding of the possible negative effects of energy deficiency. Any physiological problem could be impacted by energy metabolism. For example, even if something is known to be caused by a deficiency in a nutrient that cannot be synthesized by the body, it's still possible that improved energy metabolism might be able to reduce the usage of that nutrient in some pathways to conserve more for where it is needed.

t0bia_s• 2 years ago

- the human body seems designed to be able to produce more power for physical exertion when needed by consuming more energy (in addition to making long-term adaptations to make energy usage more efficient).

Most top athletes are retiring around 35. Their bodies are ruined like those who need to physically work hardly every day. They look elder as well.

We are not machines that will do more when given more sources without consequences.

gregwebs2• 2 years ago

Most athletes play for reasons other than health. In a competitive environment with physical contact that rewards over-exertion and playing through injuries. Those that keep pushing their body to their limit will likely find consequences. Just doing so many repetitive movements for sports will damage the body unless the athlete can train those pathways to be strong enough. Most athletes seem to play until they can't play through injury anymore.

In contrast, exercise that keeps good health in mind can require noticeable extra energy consumption and seems like it would fall in line with the huge volume of research showing the benefits of exercise.

In contrast this article seems to point to studies of increased resting metabolic rates being harmful with no evidence about exercise.

esperent• 2 years ago

...retiring around 35. Their bodies are ruined

From what I can find, this is incorrect, unless the athlete is doing a high impact sport like American football, rugby, boxing etc.

If they're doing a non impact sport like swimming, cycling, running, they are likely to live longer and healthier than non athletes.

https://healthland.time.com/2012/12/14/fast-stronger-longer-...

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4534511/

bastawhiz• 2 years ago

Most top athletes are retiring around 35. Their bodies are ruined like those who need to physically work hardly every day. They look elder as well.

This isn't a true statement. Just turn on golf or bowling or cycling or marathon running or triathlons for a few hours. People retire from sports early for lots of reasons. The ones whose bodies are wrecked are overwhelmingly the ones in impact sports.

But athletes also retire because they're no longer competitive. A 40 year old, on average, can't jump as high or run as fast as as 27 year old. You're not going to be a successful 50 year old basketball player when you're up against people decades younger than you.

The human body can't be simplified down to a candle, where once you've burned through it, it's done and over.

omayomay• 2 years ago

Well, this should be the main hypothesis of QiGong/TaiChi/Yoga.

The "energy blockages" means the affects of the stress on the body. (tight shoulders, abs etc..) And some mindful streching exercises (like QiGong and Yoga) aims to release this tension on the body (hence the reverse the effect of the stress) and be "healthy"

thenobsta• 2 years ago

I had idea of essential and incidental tension the other day. Fred Brooks' distinction is quit apt here. It seems like physical tension and is about the same software complexity. There is essential complexity/tension and incidental.

TaiChi/QiGong/Yoga is about eliminating incidental tension.

Energy-based model explains how chronic stress transforms into disease over time

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