Saturated Fats And Mitochondrias

Gascon

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I often read, and remember hear in a Danny Roddy/Haidut Podcast that Palmitic and stearic acid were the best fatty acids for mitochondria respiration. But everything I find in pubmed says the contrary.

"Saturated palmitic and stearic acids decreased insulin-induced glycogen synthesis, glucose oxidation, and lactate production. Basal glucose oxidation was also reduced. Palmitic and stearic acids impaired mitochondrial function as demonstrated by decrease of both mitochondrial hyperpolarization and ATP generation"*

" As opposed to saturated FFA, unsaturated FFA did not impair glucose metabolism and mitochondrial function"

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19780047
 

CoolTweetPete

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Have you read any of Dr. Peat's articles? He uses physiology to very clearly demonstrate that this is not the case.

This is a good place to start.

http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/fa ... ions.shtml

As far as the study you posted, I'm not well versed on how to determine if a study was well done, but a lot of the time these studies seem to be 1) poorly controlled 2) biased toward a particular outcome. Maybe someone can chime in on this one and see if the methods & motive are kosher.
 
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Gascon

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Thank you for your quick answer. I had read this article, and read it again. It doesnt seem to say that saturated fats do not impair glucose metabolism, shifting the "Randle Cycle" to fat, does it ?

Does it mean we should favour high-saturated fats meals OR high carbs but diminish the combination in the same meal ?
 
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The Ray Peat quote on saturated fat that saturated fat enthusiasts do not want to discuss and they ignore it:

"Just about everything that goes wrong involves FFA increase. If they are totally saturated fatty acids, such as from coconut oil and butter, those are less harmful, but they still tend to shift the mitochondrial cellular metabolism away from using glucose and fructose and turning on various stress related things; By lowering the carbon dioxide production I think is the main mechanism." - Ray Peat
 

Nicholas

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Westside PUFAs said:
post 118903 The Ray Peat quote on saturated fat that saturated fat enthusiasts do not want to discuss and they ignore it:

"Just about everything that goes wrong involves FFA increase. If they are totally saturated fatty acids, such as from coconut oil and butter, those are less harmful, but they still tend to shift the mitochondrial cellular metabolism away from using glucose and fructose and turning on various stress related things; By lowering the carbon dioxide production I think is the main mechanism." - Ray Peat

FFA increase would be more relative to not meeting the demands of the body than it does to saturated fat or PUFA in the diet. The stereotypical scenario is the person who over-exercises. I can't imagine a situation where "FFA increase" would be relative to an increase in fat in the diet.....and i don't think that's what Peat is even talking about here. He has even said elsewhere that PUFA is not so much a problem if you burn it efficiently.....don't remember how he described it....something tells me you know the quote. : )
 
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halken said:
post 118912 I've seen it, and I reject it.

Severus_snape_dafuq_meme.jpg
 
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I believe that the body mitochondria gradually loses the ability to metabolize long chain triglycerides. Peat has said this about sugar, but I think it's true about LCT as well and to some extend MCT. The fat is stored and not burned.

http://ajpendo.physiology.org/content/279/5/E1039.short

The main finding of the present study was that both long- and medium-chain fatty acid oxidation was depressed at the level of the mitochondria in the skeletal muscle of obese individuals.

However, other studies show that high levels of MCT are easily used as ketone bodies and over about 6 weeks, the body gets used to metabolizing them. I believe that this accounts for why we may do better with coconut oil in higher amounts as we transition to the Peat type of diet. As Peat himself has suggested.
 

brandonk

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Nicholas said:
post 118911
Westside PUFAs said:
post 118903 The Ray Peat quote on saturated fat that saturated fat enthusiasts do not want to discuss and they ignore it:

"Just about everything that goes wrong involves FFA increase. If they are totally saturated fatty acids, such as from coconut oil and butter, those are less harmful, but they still tend to shift the mitochondrial cellular metabolism away from using glucose and fructose and turning on various stress related things; By lowering the carbon dioxide production I think is the main mechanism." - Ray Peat

FFA increase would be more relative to not meeting the demands of the body than it does to saturated fat or PUFA in the diet. The stereotypical scenario is the person who over-exercises. I can't imagine a situation where "FFA increase" would be relative to an increase in fat in the diet.....and i don't think that's what Peat is even talking about here. He has even said elsewhere that PUFA is not so much a problem if you burn it efficiently.....don't remember how he described it....something tells me you know the quote. : )
From what I can see in the interview quoted, Ray Peat himself answers specifically, when asked:
https://www.raypeatforum.com/forum/view ... =73&t=6093

JR: It is possible to live entirely without eating fats, as the body can make all the unsaturated fats it needs ? Therefore, is there any importance in consuming saturated fats ?

RP: One thing is that makes the food a lot pleasanter to eat. It makes it digest more efficiently and steadily. Experiments with a loop of intestine…they would put just proteins, or just carbohydrates, or just fats in at a time; they found that the digestion was very poor until you had all three types of food present at the same time. It was as if the intestine needed a complex stimulus before it would really effectively start absorbing and digesting the food. So it's partly a stimulus to your intestines to handle the protein and the carbohydrate effectively. It’s a signal of satisfaction, that helps to lower stress, to have fat and sugar in your food.

JR: Should, yes or no, a person live on a fat-free diet ( because the body would be working more efficiently) ? Or should people simply increase their saturated fats intake ?

RP: Yeah (the latter), largely because of the effect on the taste system, and the intestine reflexes; it helps to handle the other foods efficiently, and to make the whole body recognize that it's being fed properly. So it's part of the reflex nervous system that guides eating. And it helps to satisfy the appetite, so people feel more satisfied when they had fats, especially saturated fats. In the experiments with rats (they used a purified diet), when saturated fats where added, they had similar cancer free results; it's the very small amount of unsaturated fat that is responsible for the stress and cancer production. The equivalent of just about a teaspoonful of unsaturated fat per day is enough to show a threshold increase in the incidence of cancer. When we eat natural foods, where're always getting some of the unsaturated fats. On a normal diet it's hard to get down to that threshold of about 4g of fat per day. It's hard even eating coconut oil and butter fat, and beef fat, and so on ( they only have about 2% of unsaturated fats). So, besides eating the most saturated type of fats, that’s one of the arguments for using carbohydrates as a major part of your energy supply. Because if we have some extra carbohydrates more than we need to burn at the moment, they'll turn into saturated fats and extend the proportions. So that in effect you can lower the unsaturated proportion below the threshold of carcinogenic fats.

...

JR: Can you elaborate on why you’re such a huge proponent of coconut oil ?

RP: Any of the saturated fats have an anti-inflammatory, protective effect. A group studying liver disease has found that the fish oils and shorter seed oils (unsaturated forms) increase liver inflammation and tendency to become fibrotic and cirrhosis, and that can be blocked by the saturated fats. I think it was an Indian that noticed that alcoholics in India who lived in the areas where they had ghee or butter as their main fat, didn't develop liver cirrhosis despite being alcoholic. They began testing that, and saw that alcohol activates the unsaturated fats to react with iron to break down, and produce the liver damage. So, all of the saturated fats are protective when you have an inflamed situation. And that goes all the way up to the waxes, such as extracted from bee's wax, and sugar cane, and such, that are super long-chain saturated fats. Coconut oil is in the medium-chained lengths, that includes some of the very short-chain saturated fats; mostly it’s 14 and 16 carbon chains. The shortness of the chain means that it's very mobile in your system. And the shorter saturated fats can be handled in the mitochondria without relying on the transport systems for handling 18 carbon chains for example. The 10 carbon chains can be oxidized as easily as glucose. And so, instead of interfering with glucose metabolism and switching the whole mitochondrial function, they can participate and even activate the glucose oxidation. They interfere with the anti-metabolic effects of the unsaturated fats. By interfering with the anti-metabolites, they let the mitochondria run at full speed; and that works as if you were giving a thyroid supplement. The unsaturated fats interfere with all of the effects of thyroid; all the way from the gland secreting the hormone, the proteins transporting thyroid hormone, and the cells responding to it. So, at all of those points, coconut oil is probably getting in the way of the suppressive effects of the polyunsaturated fats. But especially in the mitochondrion, where the coconut oil itself is being very quickly burned and used as energy.

JR: So, saturated fats help to protect and detoxify the body from unsaturated fats; they help with glucose oxidation, and enable the liver to store glycogen and thus regulate blood glucose. They are pro-thyroid, and anti-inflammatory.

RP: Yeah. Speeding the metabolic rate, that's the most important thing that thyroid does. And sugar and coconut oil work right with it to maximize the good metabolic oxygen consumption.
 
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haidut

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Westside PUFAs said:
post 118903 The Ray Peat quote on saturated fat that saturated fat enthusiasts do not want to discuss and they ignore it:

"Just about everything that goes wrong involves FFA increase. If they are totally saturated fatty acids, such as from coconut oil and butter, those are less harmful, but they still tend to shift the mitochondrial cellular metabolism away from using glucose and fructose and turning on various stress related things; By lowering the carbon dioxide production I think is the main mechanism." - Ray Peat

This is true, but palmitic acid specifically activates the pyruvate dehydrogenase enzyme unlike any other fat. Stearic acid can do the same but it much less potent than palmitic. Peat said it several times and I posted studies on that too. Low pyruvate dehydrogenase activity is found in virtually all disease, especially diabetes and cancer, and aging in general. Thiamine (B1), thyroid, and palmitic acid restore its function.
Also, palmitic acid is crucial for keep the mitochondrial limid cardiolipin saturated. Aging and diseases are all characterized by both decrease in cardiolipin levels and increase in the unsaturation of the composition. Babies have almost fully saturated cardiolipin and very old people have cardiolipin composed almost entirely of omega-6. Cardiolipin is one of the main controllers of cytochrome C oxidase function and the activities of electron transport chains III and IV. Animal studies with phosphatidylcholine showed that it can restore cardiolipin levels back to youthful levels, and eating saturated fat restores its saturated composition.
When you eat sugar in excess you synthesize primarily palmitic acid. Yes, eating tons of fat is not wise but is someone has been ingesting PUFA poison for years, it's better for them to gorge on saturated fat for a while to change the body composition of fats. Otherwise, if they try to lose weight all that PUFA will flood the bloodstream and wreak havoc from which very few people will be able to come out fine.
 
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haidut said:
post 118941 When you eat sugar in excess you synthesize primarily palmitic acid. Yes, eating tons of fat is not wise but is someone has been ingesting PUFA poison for years, it's better for them to gorge on saturated fat for a while to change the body composition of fats. Otherwise, if they try to lose weight all that PUFA will flood the bloodstream and wreak havoc from which very few people will be able to come out fine.

Yea. The magic of saturated fat happens when you use it in small amounts to stoke the metabolic fire.
 
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brandonk

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haidut said:
post 118941 Taking phosphatidylcholine restores cardiolipin levels back to youthful levels
I don't see any study you've posted (or any remark by Ray Peat) that might support this idea, and a systematic review found no clear benefit for AD or Parkinson's.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12917896

To my mind, supplementing phosphatidylcholine (PC) would be "non Peat". In supplement form PC could well be rancid, and derived from toxic soy.

Practically speaking, you can't avoid getting PC from an egg, although it would probably have an unsaturated fatty acid tail, and perhaps should be counted against your daily grams of unsaturated fats. Health bloggers "recommend" taking 4 grams of this "essential phospholipid" a day, so there goes 4g of unsaturated fat.
 
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ClintMgn

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But what are the odds that any disease state would show a clear benefit by improving a single factor in its pathology? Improving cardiolipin saturation would only create a *potential* for improving electron transport in complexes 1,3, & 4, and perhaps indirectly in 2 & 5?

If the study had also included groups that received, say, PC and CoQ10, a group that received PC and red light therapy, and a group that received PC and both CoQ10 and red light therapy, then it would have carried a bit more meaning.
 

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When I don't eat enough saturated fat, I feel not normal. They must have therapeutic properties. I remember one day before sleep, I ate a lot of saturated fat from milk fat, coconut oil, and butter and I woke up the next day refreshed and optimistic about life. I believe humans have evolved to enjoy saturated fat for a reason. However, for weight loss, maybe we should reduce them in favor of sugar, but whenever we crave them, we eat them, without being very rigid about dietary choices. We need to enjoy food, it's supposed to be fun.
 

haidut

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brandonk said:
post 118962
haidut said:
post 118941 Taking phosphatidylcholine restores cardiolipin levels back to youthful levels
I don't see any study you've posted (or any remark by Ray Peat) that might support this idea, and a systematic review found no clear benefit for AD or Parkinson's.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12917896

To my mind, supplementing phosphatidylcholine (PC) would be "non Peat". In supplement form PC could well be rancid, and derived from toxic soy.

Practically speaking, you can't avoid getting PC from an egg, although it would probably have an unsaturated fatty acid tail, and perhaps should be counted against your daily grams of unsaturated fats. Health bloggers "recommend" taking 4 grams of this "essential phospholipid" a day, so there goes 4g of unsaturated fat.

If the phosphatidylcholine (PC) is of animal origin, especially bovine, then it would contain saturated fat. I think most of the studies that found positive effects used dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine (DPPC). The regular PC available from vitamin stores is not DPPC.

As far phosphatidylcholine, here are Peat's quotes:
http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/fa ... ions.shtml
"...The crucial mitochondrial respiratory enzyme, cytochrome c oxidase, declines with aging (Paradies, et al., 1997), as the lipid cardiolipin declines, and the enzyme's activity can be restored to the level of young animals by adding cardiolipin. The composition of cardiolipin changes with aging, "specifically an increase in highly unsaturated fatty acids" (Lee, et al., 2006). Other lipids, such as a phosphatidylcholine containing two myristic acid groups, can support the enzyme's activity (Hoch, 1992). Even supplementing old animals with hydrogenated peanut oil restores mitochondrial respiration to about 80% of normal (Bronnikov, et al., 2010)."

http://raypeat.com/articles/aging/aspir ... ncer.shtml
"...At birth, the baby's mitochondria contain a phospholipid, cardiolipin, containing palmitic acid, but as the baby eats foods containing polyunsaturated fatty acids, the palmitic acid in cardiolipin is replaced by the unsaturated fats. As the cardiolipin becomes more unsaturated, it becomes less stable, and less able to support the activity of the crucial respiratory enzyme, cytochrome oxidase. The respiratory activity of the mitochondria declines as the polyunsaturated oils replace palmitic acid, and this change corresponds to the life-long decline of the person's metabolic rate."

Other articles that talk about cardiolipin:
http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/un ... oils.shtml
http://raypeat.com/articles/nutrition/carrageenan.shtml
http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/aging-eyes.shtml

I will search for the studies showing direct effect of PC on cardiolipin, but in the meantime here is a book that discussed how a human equivalent dose of 2g-3g taurine prevented cardiolipin decline due to toxins. Scroll down to the section that begins with "Phospholipid:".
https://books.google.com/books?id=YBsGC ... in&f=false
 
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brandonk

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If the phosphatidylcholine (PC) is of animal origin, especially bovine, then it would contain saturated fat.
Even of animal origin, phosphatidylcholine would be likely to be rancid and to contain both saturated and unsaturated fat:
https://books.google.com/books?id=LR2LB ... at&f=false

In his articles Ray Peat is trying to help us understand the metabolic processes by which we synthesize cardiolipin and other phospholipids, and how to improve its saturation with diet. Like with the so-called "essential fatty acids" Ray Peat writes that we can and do synthesize our cardiolipin and phospholipids, not that we must ingest them in the form of phosphatidylcholine. (Perhaps as a supplement maker, you wish it were otherwise. :) )

I find Andrew Kim's article on saturation indices of synthesized phospholipids to be a good survey of the literature:
http://www.andrewkimblog.com/2013/02/th ... .html#more
 

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milk_lover said:
post 118998 When I don't eat enough saturated fat, I feel not normal.
This. Feelings of anxiety generally accompany a fat-free diet.
 
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haidut

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brandonk said:
post 119023
If the phosphatidylcholine (PC) is of animal origin, especially bovine, then it would contain saturated fat.
Even of animal origin, phosphatidylcholine would be likely to be rancid and to contain both saturated and unsaturated fat:
https://books.google.com/books?id=LR2LB ... at&f=false

In his articles Ray Peat is trying to help us understand the metabolic processes by which we synthesize cardiolipin and other phospholipids, and how to improve its saturation with diet. Like with the so-called "essential fatty acids" Ray Peat writes that we can and do synthesize our cardiolipin and phospholipids, not that we must ingest them in the form of phosphatidylcholine. (Perhaps as a supplement maker, you wish it were otherwise. :) )

I find Andrew Kim's article on saturation indices of synthesized phospholipids to be a good survey of the literature:
http://www.andrewkimblog.com/2013/02/th ... .html#more

I am not suggesting anybody go and take phosphatidylcholine. Where did you see me say that? All I said is that phosphatidylcholine may increase cardiolipin. It is important to know what tools one has against the age-related decline of cardiolipin, and phosphatidylcholine may be one such tool. It has a long history in Russia and other European countries as a treatment for liver disease and dementia. The dementia effectiveness is likely due to its effects on cardiolipin.
 
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haidut

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