How Carbohydrates & Fats Create Energy (Differently)
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Today I will discuss how carbohydates and fats create energy in the cell, the role of mitochondria in it, and how to leverage this information and apply it, if you want to lean out, get healthier and optimize your energy production.
Understanding this information is going to be not only useful for people who want to burn off excess fat (yes, not saying 'lose weight' is the hill I am willing to die on), but anyone who is struggling with chronic health issues. Resetting your metabolic processes as intended by nature is the basis of health and longevity.
Because when you maximize energy production in your cells, you give them the essential resource they need to carry out their functions in the best manner possible, including getting rid of damaged parts and making brand new parts of the cell.
And mitochondria are some very important elements among those. I will tell you why.
Understand ATP - Energy Currency of the Cell
If your body was a country’s economy, your ATP would be the money. ATP Is the energy currency of your body.
More energy - more health. So we want to look for ways to maximize energy production, maximize ATP.
The most readily available source of fuel is glucose, which your body can make from carbohydrate and from protein, when needed.
When we’ve had enough food to satisfy our immediate need for energy, the rest of glucose is then stored as glycogen in the liver and in the muscles.
And when your body needs glucose again, it will either use the food (carbs or protein) or it can take it from the stores (or even make some from protein, if you are on a low carb diet).
And why I’m telling you this, is so that you understand that glucose is a great source of energy, it produces ATP quickly.
But it cannot make a lot of ATP. More on this, a bit later.
So where is the ATP energy molecules produced? In the mitochondria.
You consist of trillions of cells. Each of them, except red blood cells, have hundreds to thousands of mitochondria. Your colonies of mitochondria populate different organs in different quantities. And they look different as well, depending on the tissue where they’re located.
And so these small organelles - mitochondria - produce ATP.
Understand the Electron Transport Chain
How they do it is they take food broken down by the TCA cycle (another important conveyor belt, but this time - inside the cell) into Hydrogen and Electrons, and put those into their conveyor belts called Electron Transport Chains, ETCs.
ETCs is where ATP is produced.
Oxygen, sitting at the end of the conveyor belt of ETC, pulls magnetically the negatively charged electrons through the ETC, and with the pressure of positively charge hydrogen ions, ATP is created by a spinning nanomotor with a 100% efficiency.
This could only be created by Mother Nature by the way. We humans have not yet been able to create a 100% efficient engine.
However, if there’s not enough Oxygen (for example, you’re working out at an intense level, or another example is a blockage of an artery), there will be a build-up of lactic acid.
It increases acidity in the cell, and that’s why you have a burning sensation when you work out hard enough.
So while glucose converts to ATP quickly, it’s not the most efficient source of fuel. Also, remember, there’s not much ATP produced from glucose.
But fat is efficient, and produces 4 times more ATP.
Fatty acids are metabolized in a process called beta-oxidation and the burning of fatty acids is responsible for 60-70% of all of the energy our mitochondria create.
The net result is that each molecule of glucose forms a total of 38 ATP molecules (2 from glycolysis + 36 from TCA cycle).
And each molecule of a 16-carbon fatty acid called palmitate produces 129 ATP molecules.
So it’s no wonder, that healthy, well functioning cells prefer fatty acids as their source of fuel.
The Campfire Analogy
Think of your metabolism as a campfire.
Thin twigs and woodchip are how glucose burns - quickly creating a big fire, and quickly dying out.
And if you take olive tree logs and put them in the fire, they will produce sustained fire burning for a long time.
Those logs are how fat works - slow, sustained burning.
So why are people having so much difficulty burning off fat, if cells prefer it?
One reason is, most people never let their body to tap into the fat stores, because they’re always snacking on something that’s rich in carbohydrates.
Another reason is, fat burning - fatty acid oxidation - requires a well functioning circadian rhythm.
A well functioning circadian health is governed by sunlight, but what has happened in the last 20 years is that technology has brought us indoors.
If you look at pictures of people on the beach in the 60’s and 70’s and 80's, you would see a stark contrast to what people on the beach look like today.
It’s not all about processed foods.
The Study
Here’s a study that looked at mice, unfortunately most studies are performed on these poor animals, because what happens is that researchers dissect mice’s tissues to look inside at the results of their experiments.
This study found that the genes and enzymes that converge into fatty acid oxidation do not work, if circadian rhythm is dysfunctional in a mouse.
You can see in the graph showing that HRD1 and Sel1L regulate CREBH, and CREBH influences PPAR-alpha, which in turn induces the expression of genes encoding enzymes involved in fatty acid uptake, transport, and oxidation.
The activation of these genes leads to:
- Increased Fatty Acid Transport: Fatty acids are shuttled into mitochondria for oxidation.
- Enhanced Beta-oxidation: In both mitochondria and peroxisomes, fatty acids are broken down into acetyl-CoA, which enters the TCA cycle, producing ATP.
Carbohydrates & Sunlight Connection
Lastly, because carbohydrates products enter the ETC via Complex I, and fats - via Complex II, it’s important to understand that Complex I works on NADH, which is a UV light absorber (340 nm light).
That’s why the carbohydrate you eat should match the photonic energy of the sun where you live.
Simply put, eating seasonal and local carbohydrate in the sun will do the trick: the photonic information of the electrons coming from those carbohydrates will enter Complex I, which works on UV light and will decode that information.
Your local seasonal vegetables and fruit will automatically carry the matching information from the sun at your latitude, that they received via photosynthesis.
Another important thing to note is that mitochondrial DNA sits directly next to Complex I. So when Complex I produces more free radicals than desired, it damages mitochondrial DNA.
Conclusion
If you want to reset your metabolism to function efficiently, as it’s designed to, you need to start with eating local seasonal foods and tending to your circadian rhythms.
A good place to start is to never miss another sunrise, and block artificial light at least after sunset.
