Biologically, nature is always trying to kill things, we are just evolved enough to dismiss most without issues, but your immune system is working even when you feel fine. A recent paper highlights how the immune system even causes the liver of the healthy body to produce an energy source called ketone bodies and how that takes place by letting the liver burn fat during fasting.
'Fasting' has become a diet fad but biologically fasting begins any time the body isn't getting calories it is used to getting. There is a learned response - people who fast for real report that they don't get 'hunger pangs' after 24 hours because the stomach quickly adjusts to the new reality - whereas the biological response happens faster. We begin drawing on our fat deposits as soon as the current energy source is depleted.
Credit: University of Southern Denmark
Not all of our body cells are capable of burning fat. The brain requires an enormous amount of our daily calories in the form of ketone bodies, which the liver forms by metabolizing fats. Ketone bodies can also energize the rest of the body, using fat like the battery in a hybrid car as needed, and allowing us to function even if we don’t eat anything. That kernel of science is why ketone bodies became the focus of so many fad diets focused on cutting carbohydrates from our food - the body begins burning fat instead.
The new paper contends that the immune system affects the production of ketone bodies in fit and healthy individuals and given the beneficial effects of ketone bodies in various common metabolic disorders. What would be required next would be to understand how the immune system is trying to keep the body in equilibrium when we’re healthy. Then it would move beyond diets and correlation and into the world of clinical relevance.
Comments