Exercise + Fasting Is Stress, Causes Obesity And IR, And Requires Cortisol Blockade To Reverse

[Jarman]

I got nothing against intermittent fasting, it can certainly help especially in cases where gut is irritated and needs a break. But the point of this study and the one it cites is that chronic "endurance" exercise upregulates cortisol production, which stays elevated upon discontinuation of exercise and causes insulin resistance. The increase in production is apparently due to higher expression of 11b-HSD1 in exercised people and the change is adaptive - i.e. it will stay that way until something is done to reverse it. Combining regular "endurance" exercise with chronic CR makes the situation worse.

Cool so fasting is not the same as intermittent fasting. What do you think about about ramadan? Christian fasting? Buddhist vinaya fasting?

 

[haidut]

Cool so fasting is not the same as intermittent fasting. What do you think about about ramadan? Christian fasting? Buddhist vinaya fasting?

I think skipping a single meal is probably OK every now and then. I would not skip dinner though as the night is very stressful and the organism needs all the resources it can get to keep damage at bay.

 

[CLASH]

@paymanz
I saw that as well. But what if in hypothyroid (i.e. Lowered health) state sucrase is downregulated? From what I've seen intestinal enzymes are dependent on multiple factors (bile acids, substrate presence, hormonal environment, I would assume bacterial population as well).

 

[encerent]

You are right, it was both CR + exercise. I will change the title. But if you look at the third to the last quote they cite other studies that also found exercise to lead to IR and obesity (post-cessation) and those studies did not combine exercise with CR. Here are the links.
Sustained rise in triacylglycerol synthesis and increased epididymal fat mass when rats cease voluntary wheel running. - PubMed - NCBI
Alterations in insulin receptor signalling in the rat epitrochlearis muscle upon cessation of voluntary exercise. - PubMed - NCBI

Peat does talk about exercise and I also mentioned it in a few of Danny's podcasts - basically it should be stimulating activity, preferably resistance training, and done at a level where you can hold a conversation while doing it. More than that and you are hyperventilating.

Yes he talks about exercise. Taking comfortable walks in a nice environment is the best exercise.

 

[Thoushant]

And before everybody starts jumping on the mifepristone (RU486) bandwagon. The study claims that the benefits were due to RU486 inhibiting 11b-HSD1. However, the effects were mixed - in some tissues RU486 actually increased 11b-HSD1, which is highly undesirable. I think a much safer approach would be a combination of progesterone + DHEA, as both have direct anti-cortisol effects systemically (vs. the selective modulation done by RU486). That, and of course supporting thyroid function.
DHEA, In Low Doses, Directly Inhibits Cortisol Synthesis
DHEA Enhances Cortisol Degradation
The Anti-cortisol Mechanism Of Progesterone

Okay, so appearently @gboldeuv was banned. And then this post direct contradiction of what gboldeuv stated comes along.

Are you suggesting Obese aromatase ridden people would benefit from DHEA? how would that work, would the 5mg DHEA be enough to inhibit total aromatase activity in WAT? Would the low SHBG associated with obesity prevents increased androgens from being aromatased?
This thread is fear mongereing, and it's a shame to see it coming from such an authority figure here. You qoute fear inducing articles that have no relationship to healthy exercise or CR, and you conclude based on that exercise & CR is bad.

I'm very happy I lost my weight before this post comes along, I am trustful your forum posts, and this would have ****88 up every effort of losing weight, due to fear.

BTW the first study, rats ran 150 km total distance for three weeks. That is 50km/w, or 7 km/day.(WTFFFFFF other rats study are in ballpark of 1km/day)
If we assume a rat is 15 cm long, then they ran 466,666(HALF A MILLION) times their own height?! A human running 7km would be 3500-4000 times their own height.

Does that indicate that these rats are so absurdly stressed, that they are not at all indicative of a human who decided to change some lifestyle parameters? Or does that even indicate that this study is trustworthy to conclude such drastic remarks on? There are tons of human studies on exercise / fasting improving insulin sensitivity etc, why omit those?

 

[Waynish]

We should make a clear definition of fasting - is there one here Haidut? Obviously it is more stressful to exercise 10 minutes after eating than it is to exercise 1h after eating. Children can do it without much of a problem, however. Because exercising can increase peristalsis, when that's a metabolic bottleneck I think people can get a short-term metabolic increase with strategic exercise (walking is generally how this is done it seems).

 

[chispas]

..if you have a more effective method to build your way to clean and jerk more than 150 kg or squatting 200 kg than the US or Russian or Chinese Olympic teams coaches, I'd like to see it and even try it.

I have worked on a method for the last 24 months, and I think I have found it. Cost me about $7500 in research and development.

What you are suggesting is exactly what my goal has been since the beginning.

 

[ecstatichamster]

Yes and many people after reading about the benefits of sugar and saturated fat, simply avoid PUFA and limit starches, not counting saturated fat intakes. What I was doing at the beginning was drinking 2% milk, whole milk, half and half in my coffee, organic beef, lamb sausage, frying in butter/coconut oil. I wasn't counting the fat calories at all, but probably consuming 3-4k calories a day total, and only lifting a few times each week. I felt great so I didn't pay attention when the fat started to accumulate. Now, 3 years later and 40 pounts heavier. I am lowering my fat intake and trying to burn it away, but it is relatively slow to the fat loss experienced by fasters and low carbers. I can lose maybe 1-2 lbs a week... Im trying to go extremely low fat now and I've stopped taking niacinimide and aspirin so maybe that will help bump it up to 3 lbs a week.

What’s wrong with losing 1 pound per week? That’s my goal. I’m accomplishing it very easily with no hunger at all. In one year and that’s 52 pounds. That’s quite a lot of loss actually. I wouldn’t want to lose more than that in a year because it’s not safe.

 

[vulture]

I have worked on a method for the last 24 months, and I think I have found it. Cost me about $7500 in research and development.

What you are suggesting is exactly what my goal has been since the beginning.

I'm all ears if you need lab rats

 

[sladerunner69]

What’s wrong with losing 1 pound per week? That’s my goal. I’m accomplishing it very easily with no hunger at all. In one year and that’s 52 pounds. That’s quite a lot of loss actually. I wouldn’t want to lose more than that in a year because it’s not safe.

One year is a long time....

 

[tankasnowgod]

Anecdotal "evidence" of this...
~90% of The Biggest Loser contestants one year later (or sooner)...

One thing to note about "The Biggest Loser," it is the most extreme diet tested on the most unfit subjects EVER. When Kevin Hall compared Biggest Loser contestants to Gastric Bypass patients, the Biggest Loser patients did far worse. On the face, it seems like a fair comparison, but that's not the case. The Biggest Loser contestants were worse off in every way at BASELINE than bypass patients were after a year of forced caloric restriction and surgery. That's because the TBL picks the worst of the worst, and then makes them go from completely sedentary to exercising 6 hours A DAY with no ramp up time.

Think of it this way...... if you're 100 pounds overweight, you can find a doctor to give you bypass surgery, but even if you're 200 pounds overweight, you might not get selected for TBL as they want the person who's 250 pounds overweight.

There's also the issue that using drug use like amphetamines have played a role on that show, and water manipulation techniques.

I won't dispute that chronic exercise or excess DR is problematic, but The Biggest Loser is exponentially worse.

 

[Peatful]

One thing to note about "The Biggest Loser," it is the most extreme diet tested on the most unfit subjects EVER. When Kevin Hall compared Biggest Loser contestants to Gastric Bypass patients, the Biggest Loser patients did far worse. On the face, it seems like a fair comparison, but that's not the case. The Biggest Loser contestants were worse off in every way at BASELINE than bypass patients were after a year of forced caloric restriction and surgery. That's because the TBL picks the worst of the worst, and then makes them go from completely sedentary to exercising 6 hours A DAY with no ramp up time.

Think of it this way...... if you're 100 pounds overweight, you can find a doctor to give you bypass surgery, but even if you're 200 pounds overweight, you might not get selected for TBL as they want the person who's 250 pounds overweight.

There's also the issue that using drug use like amphetamines have played a role on that show, and water manipulation techniques.

I won't dispute that chronic exercise or excess DR is problematic, but The Biggest Loser is exponentially worse.

I agree.
My observation was a brushstroke.
The stress of the DR and excessive exercise on these obese clients made them sicker metabolically.
Extreme examples for sure; but so much to glean from it.
I remember when the NYT article came out. Lots of fear/confusion with my friends. Same disbelief when Bob Harper had a MI.
The link haidut attached was good reading.

 

[haidut]

Okay, so appearently @gboldeuv was banned. And then this post direct contradiction of what gboldeuv stated comes along.

Are you suggesting Obese aromatase ridden people would benefit from DHEA? how would that work, would the 5mg DHEA be enough to inhibit total aromatase activity in WAT? Would the low SHBG associated with obesity prevents increased androgens from being aromatased?
This thread is fear mongereing, and it's a shame to see it coming from such an authority figure here. You qoute fear inducing articles that have no relationship to healthy exercise or CR, and you conclude based on that exercise & CR is bad.

I'm very happy I lost my weight before this post comes along, I am trustful your forum posts, and this would have ****88 up every effort of losing weight, due to fear.

BTW the first study, rats ran 150 km total distance for three weeks. That is 50km/w, or 7 km/day.(WTFFFFFF other rats study are in ballpark of 1km/day)
If we assume a rat is 15 cm long, then they ran 466,666(HALF A MILLION) times their own height?! A human running 7km would be 3500-4000 times their own height.

Does that indicate that these rats are so absurdly stressed, that they are not at all indicative of a human who decided to change some lifestyle parameters? Or does that even indicate that this study is trustworthy to conclude such drastic remarks on? There are tons of human studies on exercise / fasting improving insulin sensitivity etc, why omit those?

It is not fear-mongerig, it is done as a counterexample to people considering doing tens of days of fasting drinking only water, which for most people would be disastrous healthwise. Peat said explicitly a number of times over email, interviews and even on his website that long-term fasting or "endurance" exercise only worsen things in the long run.
Did you read through the thread and the various comments? The overall message, if any, is to eat when you are hungry and do short, intense bouts of exercise (resistance training is probably best) in order to build muscle mass and thus raise RMR. Doe sthat sound like fear-mongering to you?
The general recommendation to fast extensively and run as main methods to keep weight at bay will create insulin resistance through cortisol overproduction, which will be hard to reverse afterwards. As you can see, it took a drug like RU486 to reverse it in this study. For example, in the case of the Biggest Loser study, which is also posted in the thread somewhere, there was no reversal and these people either piled ALL the weight back on or got very sick and some of them died. There is a reason for excess weight and usually it is endocrine of nature. So, if a person is very obese they should probably get a full endocrine workup before getting involved in extreme activities like week long fasting events and running/swimming on empty stomach.
Based on that workup (cholesterol, pregnenolone, cortisol AM/PM, prolactin, estrogen, DHEA/S, T, DHT, insulin, IGF-1, TSH, rT3, T4. T3) the person can then decide if anything needs to be supplemented. But if the person is obese chances are estrogen/cortisol are high and androgens/DHEA are low, and this is also written in the basic biochemistry books that were mentioned in other threads a few times.

 

[haidut]

We should make a clear definition of fasting - is there one here Haidut? Obviously it is more stressful to exercise 10 minutes after eating than it is to exercise 1h after eating. Children can do it without much of a problem, however. Because exercising can increase peristalsis, when that's a metabolic bottleneck I think people can get a short-term metabolic increase with strategic exercise (walking is generally how this is done it seems).

My definition would be anything more than 24 hours without any calories. It can vary among people depending on metabolic rate, and in people with high metabolism even 6-8 hours would already be a fast. But anything beyond 24 hours where a full night of sleeping on an empty stomach was involved will send clear signal to the organism that food is not available and that will get the basic stress system into high gear - steroid synthesis will decline (except cortisol and estrogen), serotonin will rise, thyroid hormone will drop, etc.

 

[Thoushant]

Did you read through the thread and the various comments? The overall message, if any, is to eat when you are hungry and do short, intense bouts of exercise (resistance training is probably best) in order to build muscle mass and thus raise RMR. Doe sthat sound like fear-mongering to you?

The articles you qouted are extreme and not reflective of a healthy human attitude to fasting or exercising. The title is too extreme for what the evidence you show is, and you put it in science section. It's not about the rest of the comments. You are the biggest star here, and your obviously very knowledgeable, this is the knowledge you can show, and to me personally I learn more from this, then from extreme headlines

Based on that workup (cholesterol, pregnenolone, cortisol AM/PM, prolactin, estrogen, DHEA/S, T, DHT, insulin, IGF-1, TSH, rT3, T4. T3) the person can then decide if anything needs to be supplemented. But if the person is obese chances are estrogen/cortisol are high and androgens/DHEA are low, and this is also written in the basic biochemistry books that were mentioned in other threads a few times.

 

[haidut]

One thing to note about "The Biggest Loser," it is the most extreme diet tested on the most unfit subjects EVER

Problem is that most of the people who would even consider this type of extreme intervention are exactly the ones that are so unfit they feel drastic measures are needed. That was the whole point of the thread - extreme measures are probably only safe for young and healthy people, who ironically need them the least. This thread was posted as a counterexample of other threads recommending month long fasts and running as a way to lose weight. The other message that I was hoping to get across is that if there is a weight problem there is usually an endocrine problem, and fasting/running will probably make it worse. So, better to work with endocrinologist and find out what that problem is instead of getting involved in extreme measures that will make things worse in the long run and may even cause a few cases of type I diabetes (through excessive lipolysis) or heart events in the short run.

 

[haidut]

The articles you qouted are extreme and not reflective of a healthy human attitude to fasting or exercising. The title is too extreme for what the evidence you show is, and you put it in science section. It's not about the rest of the comments. You are the biggest star here, and your obviously very knowledgeable, this is the knowledge you can show, and to me personally I learn more from this, then from extreme headlines

Do you think that going on 40+ days of water-only fasting is not extreme? Again, a counterexample to extreme recommendation like that is not likely to be mild. This is from the study itself:
"...Severe caloric restriction (CR), in a setting of regular physical exercise, may be a stress that sets the stage for adiposity rebound and insulin resistance when the food restriction and exercise stop. In this study, we examined the effect of mifepristone, a glucocorticoid (GC) receptor antagonist, on limiting adipose tissue mass gain and preserving whole body insulin sensitivity following the cessation of daily running and CR. "

So, how does my title mis-represent the study discussed here? If I change the title to "Significant CR + regular exercise is stress..." would that be reflect the study better?

 

[Thoushant]

You can see my comment on the articles some pages back. what you are highlighting "may.." is speculation from the authors and the reason for the experiment, other than that the parameters tested show transient short term effects of stopping this CR and exercise, not long term. It would be really intersting to find long term studies.

 

[haidut]

It would be really intersting to find long term studies

Agreed, I have been looking for these for some time but there is not much on the subject (aside from the biggest loser data). If you know of anything please post here. Any long term data will be invaluable.
I think a combination of resistance training and fat-restriction can help lose weight and possibly keep it off. But the bigger problem most people do not address IMO is why they got there in the first place, so that is why a good panel of tests on some of these variables should help. If there is a thyroid deficiency or adrenal hyperactivity, then exercise/fasting could make things worse. In fact, in metabolic wards before studies like this are one on people there is always an endocrinologist involved and full tests are done before anything starts. I am surprised so many doctors (PCP) dole out running and dieting regimens without knowing where their obese patients stand on things like steroids, heart health, or even bone density.

 

[Thoushant]

Effect of 6-Month Calorie Restriction on Biomarkers of Longevity, Metabolic Adaptation, and Oxidative Stress in Overweight Individuals
This one might be better to pick apart.