Craig Constantine

Core temperature

April 19, 2022

Interestingly, regardless of exercise intensity, exercising in the cold has been shown to reduce and delay the typical [human growth hormone] response to exercise, leading to the speculation that the increase in core temperature may be the more important regulator of growth hormone release.
~ Brad Pilon from, https://bradpilon.com/weight-loss/temperature-and-growth-hormone/

slip:4ubawe4.

Human growth hormone is involved in a lot of the body’s signaling, and I was instantly curious about “hacking” exercise to raise core temperature… and then I remembered all the classic “boxers training in sweat suits”—drenched in sweat! It’s right in the name of the clothing. Boxes know a lot about training, muscle and getting into shape.

But then I got completely distracted reading the Wikipedia page. First off, I remember when we didn’t know what the actual shape of molecules were. Then along came mathematical modeling, protein folding… and I think there’s even a “folding at home” project where you can “donate” your computer’s free time to help figure out how proteins fold. Anyway, Human Growth Hormone seems to be solved. It has 192 (!?!) amino acids. The thing is enormous— except it’s actually not that big as far as proteins go. And the folded shape is as important as the chemical composition of each molecule. And you begin to realize the insane complexity of proteins that have hundreds of amino acids… And then you eat food and your body needs enzymes to disassemble these huge molecules into . . . sorry. I got excited. Ahem.

Warburg’s finding

July 24, 2019

In 1924 a scientist named Otto Warburg happened upon a counterintuitive finding. Cancer cells, even in the presence of sufficient oxygen, underwent a type of metabolism cells reserved for rapid energy demand – anaerobic metabolism. In fact, even when cancer cells were given additional oxygen, they still almost uniformly defaulted into using only glucose to make ATP via the anaerobic pathway. This is counterintuitive because this way of making ATP is typically a last resort for cells, not a default, due to the very poor yield of ATP.
~ Peter Attia from, https://peterattiamd.com/way-exploit-metabolic-quirk-cancer/

slip:4upewa2.

This is a simple introduction to the two methods our cells can use to get the energy they need to do everything; One way is efficient and one is not. It’s critical that our cells can switch between the two methods as circumstances change. The curious discovery made by Warburg is that cancer cells always use the inefficient method.

Digging into Ketosis and the Ketogenic diet

February 25, 2018

https://tim.blog/2016/07/06/dom-dagostino-part-2/

slip:4utido1.

This is a superlative question-and-answer session where Dr. Dagostino answers questions collected from Tim Ferris’s listeners.

It’s not so much a pitch about why you should do it (ketosis / the diet), but rather, it’s a deep discussion of all the details. What exactly is ketosis, how does it work, how do the systems in your body interact (at the various levels of organ, glands, hormones, cells, biochemics, and molecules.) Dr. Dagostino is obviously very much in favor of ketosis, but there’s a ton of useful information here.

slip:4c2ke1a.

Sunshine is good

June 9, 2015

(Part 23 of 25 in series, M. Eades' Blog)

Most of the US and Europe are too far north to get enough sun exposure to generate the production of adequate vitamin D during a large part of the year. And, second, most parents are so fearful of sunburn that they slather their kids with sunscreen if and when they let these children play outside during the part of the year they can make adequate vitamin D. Since a sunscreen with an SPF of only 8 reduces the synthesis of vitamin D by 95 percent, think of how little vitamin D children with sunscreens of SPF 30 or 45 are making. Zero.
~ Michael Eades from, http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/supplements/sunshine-superman/

slip:4upodi1.

Hyperinsulinemia (too much insulin)

June 3, 2015

(Part 22 of 25 in series, M. Eades' Blog)

Then I asked myself the big question: If I have too much insulin (and I was guessing I did – it wasn’t something you measured in those days unless you were in a scientific lab), how do I get it down? There were only two conclusions. Don’t eat. Or don’t eat carbohydrates. The latter seemed to make a lot more sense over the long run.
~ Michael Eades from, http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/cardiovascular-disease/four-patients-who-changed-my-life/

Eating meat made us human

May 28, 2015

(Part 21 of 25 in series, M. Eades' Blog)

Meat eating made us human. The anthropological evidence strongly supports the idea that the addition of increasingly larger amounts of meat in the diet of our predecessors was essential in the evolution of the large human brain. Our large brains came at the metabolic expense of our guts, which shrank as our brains grew.
~ Michael Eades from, http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/low-carb-library/are-we-meat-eaters-or-vegetarians-part-ii/

Persistent organic pollutants

May 4, 2015

(Part 17 of 25 in series, M. Eades' Blog)

Organochlorine pesticides (DDT, lindane, etc), organochlorine and organobromine industrial pollutants, solvents, placticizers, and a host of other such substances are in the stored fat of all of us. Their use over the previous decades has so filled our environment with these chemicals that we can’t escape them. The are in the air, they fall in the rain, they are in the groundwater. Consequently, they are in our food. Whenever we eat, we get a load of these persistent organic pollutants (POPs) that make their way into our fat cells and cells in other tissues. And they build up because we can’t get rid of them.
~ Michael Eades from, http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/weight-loss/a-legitimate-use-for-orlistat/

Longevity and membrane saturation

April 28, 2015

(Part 16 of 25 in series, M. Eades' Blog)

The cell membranes of both young and old honey bee queens are highly monounsaturated with very low content of polyunsaturates. Newly emerged workers have a similar membrane fatty acid composition to queens but within the first week of hive life, they increase the polyunsaturate content and decrease the monounsaturate content of their membranes, probably as a result of pollen consumption. This means their membranes likely become more susceptible to lipid peroxidation in this first week of hive life. The results support the suggestion that membrane composition might be an important factor in the determination of maximum life span.
~ Michael Eades from, http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/uncategorized/longevity-and-membrane-saturation/