McMaster researchers may have found a way to restore metabolism to youth levels

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/news/want-to-eat-like-a-teen-again-science-may-have-found-a-way-1.2862231

by RyanMcGreal • 12 years ago

194 121 12 years ago

Seems like we are trying to engineer a solution that is fundamentally a behavioral issue rather than mechanical. I do realize though that assuming we can reign in consumption socially is a non-starter at the same time though I think enabling high levels of consumption is the opposite of what we should be doing.

That said, anything we can do to reverse aging I am all for, I just hope our consumption patterns can become less extreme.

waterlesscloud• 12 years ago

Isn't the change in metabolism as you age mechanical?

danudey2• 12 years ago

The article discusses the change in metabolism as being (at least partly) as a result of fatty, awful North American diets; it's possible that the change is normal over time as a cumulative result of diet but that the North American diet accelerates the process.

That would also explain the childhood obesity epidemic; forcing our kids to run laps and play sports doesn't help if they have a fundamentally flawed diet that rapidly accelerates their serotonin production/accretion, especially if younger children are more prone to the process.

The metabolic change would also explain the various studies/experiments I've seen where people who became obese and then lost significant weight retained the same appetite as they had when they were obese.

Igglyboo• 12 years ago

You can argue that everything in the universe is mechanical, even electricity, if you look at a small enough scale.

nostromo• 12 years ago

It's often not behavior changes that turn healthy 20 year olds into obese 50 year olds -- it's that behaviors stay the same while the body changes.

If we can find a way to bring some of those perks of youth into older age, I think it's great.

swalsh• 12 years ago

This is very true, I'm a creature of habit. When I go to restaurants I always order the same thing, at home I eat the same things. Each week I rotate the same few options. To me it's very satisfying (my wife hates it, she ventures out more often)

Right around age 25 or so despite nothing changing in my life other than my age, I started to gain weight. Very slowly, but it was adding up.

After doing some calorie counting I lost about 30lbs over 8 months, and returned to my original weight. Though since then I've been struggling to find the right number to increase to. The suggested number of 2000 seems to be too high.

AndrewKemendo2• 12 years ago

You're exactly right on that because I am transitioning from young guy to old guy and can see it happen.

That doesn't mean my old eating habits were sustainable though forever. I think we need to be able to reduce our consumption if we aren't growing anymore.

exelius3• 12 years ago

That said, anything we can do to reverse aging I am all for, I just hope our consumption patterns can become less extreme.

I disagree; aging and death are natural processes that could wreak havoc economically if significantly altered. Right now, the young have the ability to progress in the economy because older people eventually leave the workforce through retirement or death.

People need to be able to die naturally. If nobody died, and everyone had children, the population would simply grow with no prospect of stopping it. Though the more likely proposition would be that the wealthy who could afford the treatments would never die, and the rest of the population would. That's an even worse scenario in my opinion.

JoshTriplett2• 12 years ago

Feel free to die then. Don't condemn everyone else.

Are you going to complain because life expectancies have already gone up by decades?

"We need more resources because we cured death" is precisely the kind of problem we ought to have.

noobermin2• 12 years ago

Taking that hypothesis, do you suppose that the lengthening of the life expectancy of developed countries has had a negative impact on said countries? Or do you think about life prolongation is a good thing up to a point?

Florin_Andrei• 12 years ago

It's not like the eternal life police will one day show up at your door and condemn you to immortality.

You can always die whenever you want to. That's not the hard problem to solve.

eli_gottlieb5• 12 years ago

Right now, the young have the ability to progress in the economy because older people eventually leave the workforce through retirement or death.

You're kidding, right? This is some kind of bad joke in which longevity is blamed for the shitty labor market faced by Millenials?

Though the more likely proposition would be that the wealthy who could afford the treatments would never die, and the rest of the population would. That's an even worse scenario in my opinion.

Yes, that's why we should smash capitalism.

tptacek• 12 years ago

Behavior and biology are intimately linked.

michaelochurch2• 12 years ago

Fixing metabolic slowdown isn't going to end obesity or reduce the need for exercise, but it will level the playing field.

It's still going to require effort, for many people, to maintain a healthy weight and exercise enough. But it's hard enough to do that as it is; if you can turn off a defect that causes the body to pile on unneeded pounds of fat (that interfere with health, mood, and the ability to exercise) with age, then you should.

revelation• 12 years ago

How is metabolic slowdown a defect? I don't see middle-aged people dropping dead around me, so clearly all that has happened is that their bodies are now more efficient. Great news!

And piling on fat making it harder to exercise? Sure, on the face of it that's true, but usually the one happens because theres a dire lack of the other.

7Figures2Commas2• 12 years ago

They're calling it a possible solution to obesity and a preventative measure for diabetes, one that turns up the body's metabolic rate without the negative side effects of increasing the heart rate or blood pressure.

I think "possible solution" is too strong. According to the CDC, as of 2012 "more than one third of children and adolescents were overweight or obese" so it logically follows that simply restoring the metabolic rate of adults to their teenage rates probably won't help a sizable portion of the population.

Also, while it's promising that this doesn't increase heart rate or blood pressure, weight is just one factor in overall health. There are a lot of adults who are of a healthy weight but still aren't very healthy. For instance, a healthy weight doesn't mean that an individual has good cardiovascular health or functional strength. It's a shame that so much emphasis is placed on weight when it's really only a part of the equation and arguably not even the most important.

It's kind of silly how we keep looking for a pill for appearance (weight) when it's not hard to notice that people who focus on cardiovascular conditioning and functional strength usually have the healthiest looking bodies. Weight and body composition follow from healthy lifestyle; health does not follow from weight.

[1] http://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/obesity/facts.htm

danudey2• 12 years ago

I think "possible solution" is too strong. According to the CDC, as of 2012 "more than one third of children and adolescents were overweight or obese" so it logically follows that simply restoring the metabolic rate of adults to their teenage rates probably won't help a sizable portion of the population.

I think the message here is slightly different; it's not talking about 'setting it back to what your metabolism was like as a teenager', but rather 'setting a healthy person's metabolism back to what a healthy teenager's would be'.

It's entirely possible that the reason for the childhood obesity epidemic is an underdeveloped biology pumped full of these metabolism-destroying foods (accelerating the production of serotonin, etc.), resulting in a ruined metabolism far earlier than would be normal.

In other words, the diet that would cause obesity after 20 years starting at age 15 might cause obesity after 10 years starting at 5.

7Figures2Commas2• 12 years ago

Again, you're focusing too much on weight. "Healthy" does not mean "not overweight."

There are tons of people, including young people, who can't do 5 minutes of moderately intense walking without becoming excessively winded. There are lots of people who can't do more than a pushup or two, and many can't even do a single pushup. And so on and so forth. A good percentage of these people are not overweight.

Many of the problems that become particularly troublesome as people age are related more to cardiovascular health and functional strength than they are to weight alone. If we create a magic pill that prevents or delays the onset of excessive weight gain from poor diet and lack of exercise, it's not going to produce "healthy" people and it won't address many of the quality of life issues that arise from unhealthy lifestyles.

In some ways, weight gain is a good thing. For young people who otherwise feel okay, it is sometimes the only visible symptom of a destructive lifestyle. And I say that as someone who lost nearly a third of my body weight by radically changing my lifestyle in my 20s.

npsimons2• 12 years ago

Also, while it's promising that this doesn't increase heart rate or blood pressure, weight is just one factor in overall health.

True, but it's a very telling factor. Past a certain upper threshold, weight will have adverse impacts on a person's health, eg joint issues at a minimum. It's fairly easy and logical to look at a skinnier person (above a certain lower bound) and predict they will have fewer medical issues than a fat person. Of course, this is judging by certain proportions, hence why the BMI was invented (and before anyone goes off on the inaccuracy of BMI, just realize that unless body fat percentage is below a certain threshold (eg high-level athletes), BMI is a fairly accurate predictor of health).

aculver• 12 years ago

Sorry to be off-topic, but I was drawn to the story because of the McMaster reference and I bet some other Hamiltonians probably will be to. Would love to connect with any HN folks in Hamilton!

quadrature• 12 years ago

Same here, like a moth to a flame.

nilved• 12 years ago

Ditto. Email me@devlinzed.com if you want to hang out or work on something. I work at factor[e] on Locke.

srj55• 12 years ago

small world. I'm a few hundred feet away on Chatham St.

RyanMcGreal• 12 years ago

Count me in, too.

sprawl_• 12 years ago

Mcmaster computer engineering student here.

AlexSolution• 12 years ago

Checking in from Platform 302.

Pxtl• 12 years ago

Honk.

jorjordandan• 12 years ago

'nother hamiltonian here. Hoping to start working at platform 302 a couple days a week, soon. emailable at jordan@jordandavis.ca

jreimers• 12 years ago

Sure, email is in my profile

crescentfresh• 12 years ago

'04 comp sci grad here. Love the hammer!!

whalesalad• 12 years ago

I'm hoping to move up closer to y'all sometime early next year. Pretty radical to see so many people from the hammer on HN.

alexvar• 12 years ago

Recent alumni here! I'm working in Toronto now but when I saw the Hammer mentioned on a post I just had to say something!

noobermin2• 12 years ago

So, I thought serotonin was basically the "happiness" hormone. Wouldn't inhibiting serotonin have side-effects like making them feel depressed or at least less happy? Can any biologists comment?

EDIT: as a replier mentioned, it's discussed in the article.

tempestn2• 12 years ago

The article discusses this:

Steinberg also noted that the serotonin found in the brain is not linked to what's happening in the digestive tract serotonin. He said it's strictly reflective of "periphery serotonin," and that the serotonin found in the brain, some five per cent of total serotonin in the body, does not interact. The two pools of the same hormone are separated by what's called a blood brain barrier, and do not mix.

It leaves the question of the link between depression, serotonin levels and obesity up in the air, something Steinberg says he can't answer just yet.

So my understanding is, "probably not, but they can't be entirely sure yet."

fluidcruft• 12 years ago

That's pop-neuro-psych gibberish marketing talk--molecules aren't moods any more than motor oil is velocity. Also, synaptic serotonin is in a different compartment. But I was pondering about the link between SSRIs and weight gain.

jonnathanson• 12 years ago

"But I was pondering about the link between SSRIs and weight gain."

Indeed, there may be some connection there. But frustratingly, we don't really know what the connection is, or if it has multiple factors--and if so, how those factors relate to one another. To date (to the best of my knowledge), reports of weight gain from people taking SSRIs have been anecdotal. There is a large enough sample size to draw a clear connection; the weight gain isn't imaginary. (It occurs in about 25% of SSRI users, and the risk for weight gain increases over the duration of SSRI usage.) But there haven't been controlled, clinical studies of of the effect. Do SSRIs affect metabolism in some way? Possibly. Do they affect appetite instead, or in addition to, metabolism? Possibly. Do they affect gut microflora? Possibly. Could be any of these things; could be all of these things; could be something we haven't even hypothesized yet. There is a relationship; we don't yet know the directionality of cause and effect, or the factors involved, or their individual significance in the causal web.

These new results are fascinating, and they give further impetus for further study.

CapitalistCartr• 12 years ago

But brain chemistry is inextricably linked to human moods. That's why we prescribe people psychoactive drugs. And why people take them recreationally.

joezydeco• 12 years ago

Ask anyone who has ever been on Paxil (a common SSRI) if they've had any weight gain. It's nicknamed "Packs-on" for a reason.

nooron• 12 years ago

Your first sentence contains an amazing turn of phrase. Thank you.

eldude• 12 years ago

Based on the findings of this article, the OTC EGCG should "restore metabolism to youth levels."

Using a decarboxylase or AADC[0] inhibitor like EGCG[1] found in green tea extract limits peripheral serotonin metabolism, especially if you're supplementing with serotonin precursors like tryptophan or 5-HTP to avoid heart-valve issues.[2]

See Examine.com's note in the 5-HTP article[3] and the associated citation.[4] 800mg of EGCG 2 hours prior to supplementation demonstrated decarboxylase inhibition.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aromatic_L-amino_acid_decarboxy...

[1] http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000MYW2ZA/

[2] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15781732

[3] http://examine.com/supplements/5-HTP/#summary5-1

[4] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11374875

boo_radley• 12 years ago

IT'S CALLED COCAINE AND IT'S AWESOME

tempestn2• 12 years ago

I don't really understand the comments here, and especially on the article itself, deriding this research because "people should just get off their butts and exercise" or similar. I'm sure the researchers wouldn't dispute the benefits of exercise. But if there really is a safe, effective way to improve the metabolism and make it easier to keep off fat, why exactly is that a bad thing? (Naturally the research is far too early on to know that, but hypothetically speaking.) Of course you should continue to exercise and stay healthy in other ways, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't also look for other ways to make it easier for people to get to, or remain at, a healthy weight.

ChuckMcM• 12 years ago

There are few topics that create as much controversial conversation. The well known ones are religion and politics, the third is 'diet/exercise.' Always a lot of energy.

andywood• 12 years ago

Or in summary:

1. Our ways > your ways.

2. Nuh uh.

3. (Optional) Wanna fight about it?

Iterate!

(HN version of #2: "Hyperlinks to statistically rigorous peer reviewed studies or GTFO")

CamperBob2• 12 years ago

Especially around here. Health-related posts bring out the same well-informed, scientifically literate opinions from the HN crowd that I'd expect when reading posts about C++ programming on webmd.com.

I really wish users could downvote stories.

the_cat_kittles• 12 years ago

I think its a variation of "bikeshedding"- everyone eats and gets some form of exercise, so everyone feels entitled to an opinion.

ryanobjc6• 12 years ago

You probably inherently understand that obesity is widely considered a moral disease.

Therefore, the only solution to a moral failing is trial by fire.

So, by recasting obesity as something OTHER than a moral failing, well you are removing the very thing that lets a portion of society feel superior to others.

And you can't do that.

meric4• 12 years ago

Technically removing the consequences of gluttony is likely to increase demand for food products and therefore increase its price, reducing available food supply and increasing world hunger. Food supply can be temporarily boosted by farming the land more intensively, but in the long run will also be detrimental to food production. Until our food production can be dramatically increased with minimal effect on the environment, I'm against it.

jeltz2• 12 years ago

To me it is because this just traps you into constantly using the drug instead of adapting to the fact that you have gotten older and should eat less.

function_seven• 12 years ago

But what exactly about that situation makes it worse? Let's assume for a moment that a therapy exists that is funtionally identical to proper diet. It seems that each person could choose to weigh the costs of the drug vs. the increased enjoyment of eating whatever, or vs. the decreased time spent at a gym.

The way things work today, you're right. People "should eat less". It used to be that if you didn't want children, then you shouldn't have sex. Thankfully we have a wide variety of options that allow us to decouple sex from reproduction. I don't see why we shouldn't also have options to decouple eating from getting fat.

arasmussen• 12 years ago

"you have gotten older and should eat less" isn't a fact, it's an assumption baked into society's mind based on how aging has worked in the past. This breakthrough could break that assumption. In that case, some people (adopters) will internalize that and some people won't.

baddox• 12 years ago

I would much rather use a drug than eat less for the rest of my life.

sergers• 12 years ago

Should watch the documentary fed up.

Covers a number interesting stats that show increase in sugar and other cost cutting products growth is growing with obesity.

I have lost over 100lbs in 2 years once weighing near 300 from hard work exercising, risky metabolism boosters stacks with ephedrine (not banned in Canada), interval training constantly monitoring my heart rate during workouts especially cause of ephedrine and changing my diet.

I have kept it off for 3 years without having really exercising in the past 3 years by lowering carb and sugar intake and removed all fast food. Still eat out and don't watch any calorie or fat content

Exercise alone won't help. Exercise in western/ euro coultures didn't gain popularity till mid 1900s. Obesity rate has exploded since then. More people are going to the gym and exercising yet even more population is even fatter...

zackmorris• 12 years ago

I was watching "Feeding Frenzy: The Food Industry, Marketing & the Creation of a Health Crisis" on LinkTV last night and they talked about how obesity is rising in 3-6 year olds. The point being that children in that age group are no less active today than in the past, so something else is causing obesity, type II diabetes and other problems.

The most likely culprit is processed food, where nutrients are not used in their natural form, but instead converted into something else. So using corn to make high fructose corn syrup, soy and cottonseed to make oil, or feeding animal protein to herbivores are a few examples of where the food supply is getting contaminated. For example, cottonseed oil is not only a relatively unhealthy oil, but it also contains one of the highest concentration of pesticides (because cotton was not traditionally a food crop).

Not to mention that plastics contain hormone-like chemicals like BPA, they use preservatives in things like canned food that don’t need them, and add animal byproducts like pork lard to foods like refried beans that don’t need them. So our immune systems are getting bombarded by substances we either have no evolutionary history with or simply don’t need to be eating in the quantities that we are. So that inhibits aspects of our immune systems and metabolism (triggering autoimmune disorders like allergies, asthma, arthritis and metabolic syndrome).

I could literally go on forever about this, so the gist of it is “it’s the food supply, stupid”. Yes, being more active helps a great deal, but without proper nutrition we’re looking at a modern form of the wasting diseases similar to the ones they used to get in the 1800s before they understood vitamins and minerals, except it’s masked by obesity. I think if we didn’t have the social stigmas around laziness and the political monkeying of the farm and retail lobbies, we would have recognized obesity as an epidemic the way we did with polio and done something about it decades ago. Nothing short of going back to the foods we ate before about 1980 is going to work for the vast majority of the population. And that’s going to start with campaigns to inform people about what’s in their food and reform the way we design cities so that food centers are near where people live.

TL;DR: They found medical evidence that the western diet disrupts metabolism via pathways other than caloric intake. Now let’s do something about it.

twobits• 12 years ago

TL;DR: Capitalism solves everything. /sarcasm.

Some day humanity will realize that the freedom to say and pursue a different opinion, is not the same as "competition".

The freedom to a diff opinion, and pursuing it, is good. Cooperation and sharing, is good. Competition, is bad. It focuses on "wining" and not on solutions and improvement.

PS: Yeah, I know, I live in a wrong, fucking, century :-(

onewaystreet• 12 years ago

The most likely culprit is processed food

Food doesn't jump into kids' mouths and eat itself. If there's a problem with what kids are eating then it's their parents who are to blame.

com2kid• 12 years ago

TL;DR: They found medical evidence that the western diet disrupts metabolism via pathways other than caloric intake. Now let’s do something about it.

Some of this is cross generational. Children born to obese parents have a much higher likelihood of lifetime obesity. Wikipedia lone has a lot of good info on this.

sorbits• 12 years ago

The most likely culprit is processed food […]

Processed food alone does not seem to explain all data (though you do mention “plastics contain hormone-like chemicals”):

- Mammals that live near or with humans, from lab rats to pet pooches, have gotten fatter over recent decades.

- Fatter lab animals are the hardest to explain, since their diet is tightly controlled and well documented.

Source: http://news.discovery.com/animals/fat-pets-obesity-weight.ht...

freshhawk2• 12 years ago

I actually find it surprising here given the large number of people here sympathetic to the transhuman/singularity/quantified-self/life-hacker type ideals.

Does it not occur to them that findings like this, combined with a good diet and exercise, are the most likely candidates for actually living longer and staying healthy further into your old age?

I don't care what lazy people will "get away with", I want these advances and to continue my healthy lifestyle.

hessenwolf• 12 years ago

It brings us one step closer to The Culture.

ryanobjc6• 12 years ago

What's healthy?

I switched my diet to substantially up my saturated fats, increased my red meat intake by 4x and ended up losing weight, improving my lipids, and blood pressure and a lot more.

Basically, what I'm saying is, by ignoring ALL the advice of medical professionals and the USDA/etc was I able to change my life and establish a new, sustainable (as in for me to keep doing it), diet.

So, tell me again about what good diet is?

eli_gottlieb5• 12 years ago

Cognitive dissonance and beliefs-as-attire are a nasty thing to fall victim to. Yes, diet and exercise are the most effective longevity interventions we can possibly take on an individual scale. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean every self-proclaimed "transhumanist" or whatever will actually take the most effective action for their own health and longevity when it conflicts with long-built-up bad habits.

eli_gottlieb5• 12 years ago

Well I was going to deride the article because they're bragging about a medical finding that still only works in mice models. These often don't carry over into human beings.

But other than that, always nice to see progress made against wasting diseases and aging.

Evgeny• 12 years ago

There were at least some studies that linked faster metabolism to shorter lifespans.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3100751/

Higher Energy Expenditure in Humans Predicts Natural Mortality

I personally am trying to somewhat keep my metabolism slower by eating less often, and less in general, plus intermittent fasting. But of course everything is still open for debate.

jamesrcole• 12 years ago

I think it's because people like to moralise.

npsimons2• 12 years ago

I don't really understand the comments here, and especially on the article itself, deriding this research because "people should just get off their butts and exercise" or similar.

The problem is, from a libertarian/rugged individualism point of view, failure to lose weight is a simple failure of self control. Calories out have to be greater than calories in, after all. Also, I'm willing to bet more than a few people here have heard the fatlogic of "it's my genetics" or "it's the drugs I'm on". While there are some conditions and drugs that can contribute to weight gain, it's not nearly as common as most people using the excuse would like to think, and it usually doesn't work that way (most drugs that "cause" weight gain do it by intensifying hunger signals, not modifying metabolism, which is fairly difficult to do to any great degree via drugs - otherwise this article wouldn't be noteworthy!).

In the end, this most likely won't help the majority of the obese, who do have a medical condition (try being obese for any amount of time and tell me it's not having a negative impact on your joints, at a minimum; there is no good health above or below certain sizes). If anything, this will just make the problem worse by enabling people to consume even more food, and probably end up putting on more weight, especially since it seems that most causes of obesity are psychological (unconscious eating, eating past satiety, bad food choices, etc). Also, if some of the comments here are to be believed, this drug will just treat the symptom of obesity and not the cause (eg, processed food, BPA, etc).

I do think this research could have great applications into life extension, or helping people feel younger, but my money is on this drug not having any noticeable effect on the obese population.

stevebmark3• 12 years ago

Type 1 (!) diabetic goes off insulin, "indicating restored insulin production"(!): http://www.ijcasereportsandimages.com/archive/provisional_ar...

Type 2 diabetics improve insulin resistance: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22673594

Or, you know, just put diabetes into remission and stop medication: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1325029/

Pro tip: You may not need drugs to treat diabetic cases. Diabetics, barring genetic mutations, may just be carbohydrate intolerant.

Or just take some brand new drug that fucks with your body's chemical status and disregard how your body responds to food.

crazypyro3• 12 years ago

The type 1 diabetic in your first linked article was very recently diagnosed before the start of the experiment and a sample size of one on a brand new diagnosis doesn't seem highly significant to me. The article had some fishy elements to it that made me want to research the authors more...

The researcher appears to have a rather huge monetary investment into the paleo-style diet/care, seeing as you can order clinical care for a large sum of money from his personal site (http://paleomedicina.com/ and http://paleomedicina.com/hu/rendelesek-es-klinikai-ellatas). You'll see he has services that range up to 10,000 euros/month in Hungary, which I imagine is quite a princely sum....

Forgive me if I am making a mistake as I was using google translate, but I would definitely take that article with a grain of salt....

stevebmark3• 12 years ago

Are you saying you don't believe he went off insulin, and that his data was fabricated?

You can also just look into the decades of research done on carbohydrates and diabetes http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0899900714...

debacle2• 12 years ago

and was previously thought to only exist in rodents, hibernating animals and children

That's patently not true. It's been known that brown fat exists in small amounts in adults for quite a long time.

driverdan• 12 years ago

Publication: http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nm.3766....

This article and the researchers grossly overstate potential benefits of this research. While adults have "brown fat" there isn't a lot, certainly not enough to make up for the level of overconsumption by obese people.

It isn't appropriate to jump to conclusions about how this would work in humans based on rat experiments since rats have a much larger amount of brown fat than humans.

TL;DR: Interesting research with irresponsible and most likely incorrect assumptions about how it applies to humans.

shard• 12 years ago

So refined carbs are bad due to high glycemic index, too much fat is bad due to seratonin release, is a generally optimal diet then just lean meat and vegetables? We are running out of things to eat...

tonyarkles• 12 years ago

Lean meat and vegetables seems like a pretty good diet to me! When I'm actually following that, I do need to add some fat, otherwise I'm feeling hungry all the time. Add a bit of fat (olive oil or butter, generally for me) and things are golden. Eggs work too!

srtjstjsj• 12 years ago

lean meat and vegetables (and nuts and fruits) have been the foundation of the human diet for thousands of years.

BasLeijdekkers• 12 years ago

It seems it is the carbohydrates that cause the seratonin release[1], not the fat.

[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8697046

galkam• 12 years ago

Am I wrong, or does this contradict all the recent research about fat actually not causing obesity. http://www.businessinsider.com/experts-eat-more-fat-2014-10

rasz_pl2• 12 years ago

I was very surprised about fat blaming in this article too. Its common knowledge* that high amounts of hydrocarbons in the died decrease metabolism. When you eat food that is easy to burn your body switches to that and stops trying to burn stored fat.

*not 'grandmas wisdom', but something you can test on yourself with Ketogenic diet in 1-2 months.

emmelaich• 12 years ago

I think it was Grandma's wisdom - or at least common knowledge.

As I've commented before, from a Tolstoy novel:

    eschew[ed] farinaceous and sweet dishes..

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4441869

Otik• 12 years ago

I think the word you were looking for was "carbohydrates", not "hydrocarbons". They're not the same thing.

31reasons• 12 years ago

This research could be funded by the low-fat industry!

elementai• 12 years ago

I have a strange feeling that paleo etc folks already know this for years.

jv22222• 12 years ago

Blocking Serotonin in Gut Reverses Osteoporosis in Mice http://www.medpagetoday.com/Endocrinology/Osteoporosis/18346

NicoJuicy• 12 years ago

Higher metabolism without changing food habbits, wouldn't this be awesome for fastfood?

People still getting fat, but they buy more from now on?

McMaster researchers may have found a way to restore metabolism to youth levels

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