When you search for ways to improve your health, you will come across the term metabolism. Many results will lead into how our body convert food into energy or calories. Although it is not entirely wrong, metabolism is more complicated than just calories.
Homeostasis
To understand metabolism, first need to understand homeostasis. Homeostasis is like a thermostat where the body regulates heart rate, body temperature, blood pressure, blood sugar, hormones, and so on so that we can survive. In everyday life, our body regulates these parameters so that we can function and live. When you take blood panel at your doctor’s office, what they are looking at is what are some parameters that are out of norm or finding disruption within your homeostasis such as high cholesterol, high blood sugar, high HbA1c, c-reactive protein, to name the few.
When we consume food, exercise, dealing with cold or hot climate, will all lead into disruption of homeostasis and regulate by utilizing our metabolism. Let’s take exercise for example. When you exercise, the body temperature rises, blood pH drops, blood pressure increases, hydration and blood sugar change depending on training. Change of these parameters are due to variety of metabolic byproducts and hormones such as testosterone, cytokines, amino acids and so forth. The most important thing to learn from this is once the homeostasis disrupted and the body is capable of recovering and adapting to this change. By adaptation our body becomes more resilient against those exercise or training session.
Stress
Stress is another important factor to understand how metabolism work. There are three types of stress, physical, mental, and environmental. Physical stress can be exercise, hiking, walking, gardening, sitting in front of a computer where the body physically receive stress. Mental stress can be relationships, paying bills, change in job and so forth where the cognitive stress is applied. Environmental stress can be hot, cold, humid, dry, pollen and so on where your surrounding is affecting your body.
All these stress factors can impact to your homeostasis and use metabolic processes to regulate so that the body can adapt to the stress factors. Let’s say, for example, you are taking vacation from Seattle, WA to Tokyo, Japan. The flight from Seattle to Tokyo is about 10 hours with a time difference of 17 hours. Japan tends to have higher humidity for being an island country. Although you may be traveling for vacation, physical and environmental stress will be there, and these stress factors will disrupt your homeostasis. This may impact on your immune system, blood pressure, stress hormone, melatonin secretion and so on. Then the body use metabolic process to work towards acclimating to the change and typically the body will adjust within few days.
Imagine this was sports competition traveling instead of vacation. Not only does the body need to get adjusted to the different environment and time changes but also need to prepare for sports event. These stress factors can lead to injuries or poor performance when metabolism is not conditioned properly to cope with the changes. Even with conditioned athletes, frequent travel may not give proper time for our homeostasis to adjust and may not be able to adapt to the stress and may lead to poor performance.
What is Metabolism?
So, what is metabolism. Basic concept of metabolism is taking food through metabolic processes and convert them into human beings. We are consisting of fats, carbohydrates, proteins, nucleic acids (DNA) and a lot of water. After eating food our body converts them through metabolism into fatty acids, amino acids, glucose and nucleotides and distribute to where it is needed based on factors like homeostasis and stress.
This process of breaking down food to metabolites are needed to be done for our body to be able to use the food into its use. It is like traveling to foreign countries. Not every country uses American dollars. Therefore, you will need to convert US currency into foreign currency so the money can be used while you are in different country. This is same for the body. The body cannot use apple as it is but once they break the apple down to glucose and other micronutrients (such as vitamin and minerals) the body knows what to do with it.
Once the food is converted into fatty acids, amino acids, glucose and nucleotides through a process called catabolism (breakdown), then the body can use these building blocks to build our body through a process called anabolism (build). When we eat eggs, it goes through catabolic process to breakdown into fatty acids and amino acids then through anabolic process body uses those building blocks to create muscle fibers, for example.
What Contribute to Healthier Metabolism?
“Healthy metabolism” refers to how efficiently the transition of food converts into energy production then into energy utilization. So, is it about calorie in/calorie out? It is part of it but that is just a small part of it.
To have healthy metabolic process, factors such as the digestion absorption rate, metabolic efficiency, metabolic flexibility and cellular function need to be optimal. Majority of people who has weight issues typically have the issues with few or all of these criteria. Some of the common issues are the digestive absorption rate and metabolic flexibility is low. When the digestive absorption rate is low the food sit in the digestive track for longer period of time without nutrients being absorbed by the body. Metabolic flexibility refers to how well your body can utilize both fatty acid and glucose based on needs. In healthy individual, at rest and at moderate intensity exercise, they are dominant in fat usage. However, those who are deconditioned or not well condition trainees cannot utilize fatty acids and tend to utilize glucose as the energy. Therefore, when someone has poor metabolism they may exercise to burn so much calories but chances are they won't be able to lose fat because of metabolic inflexibility and can only use glucose as energy source. To regain metabolic flexibility exercise intensity management and controlling the nutrition become critical.
By improving digestion, metabolic efficiency, metabolic flexibility and cellular function, the body will have a better chance of decreasing oxidative damage, DNA damage, and inflammation which may also lead to higher immunity, higher mitochondrial function, and increase in autophagy. Because of these improvements the body will have higher resilience against stress, improve performance and longevity and able to utilize energy more efficiently to adapt through stress and create balance in you homeostasis more easily.
Therefore, to have healthy metabolism, factors such as training, recovery, environment, and sleep become critical.
How to Improve Metabolism?
Before talking about improving metabolism, lets talk about the top 2 cause of death in the US. They are heart disease and cancer. With medical, pharmaceutical, nutrition and physical training “improving”, these numbers seem to keep on increasing. Why? We don’t really know, however, my take is we are creating information like “strength training is better than cardio”, “this medication will help reduce fat”, “eat less, move more” and so on. These type of information is creating false input on people and make them believe in something that does not work. How do I know? Because the data shows. Between heart disease and cancer over 1.3 million people (out of 330 million US population) die every year and is increasing every year.
Part of the reason above number is increasing is because of having a poor metabolism which leads to higher oxidative stress, DNA damage, and inflammation. These issues are led by poor digestion, metabolic inefficiency, metabolic inflexibility and poor cellular function, which are caused by lack of exercise, poor diet, and lack of sleep. In other words, to improve your metabolism exercise, nutrition, and sleep becomes essential.
From the data shared above, you will need to be doing both cardio and strength. It is not one is better than other. They are both important in improving your metabolism and health. Ideally, 2-3 days a week of strength training and 3-4 days of low intensity cardio are required. Strength and cardio training can be done in the same sessions when you are limited in time.
Nutrition should be started off with 3 meals a day without snacking to start. 3 meals will need to be whole food, which means you may need to learn how to cook. This will allow you to manage your insulin level easier and also retrain your hunger and satiety hormones, leptin and ghrelin. Leave the cake, snacks, soft drinks, etc. on special occasions. If your kids are following it, so should the adults.
Sleep schedule should be followed religiously. Sleeping less than 7 hours a night has been shown to cause some kind of health problems such as cardiovascular decline, immunity drop, poor selection of food, cognitive dysfunction, and metabolic issues. Create a schedule for sleeping and awakening and stick with it as much as you can.
In a Nutshell
Metabolism is a way for our body to convert food to energy and utilize that energy into used based on what parameters our body wants to regulate through homeostasis. Stress factor also impact way our body utilize energy because it does disrupt our homeostasis. How well our metabolism function may dictate how well we can cope with stress and regulate our homeostasis so that we can adapt and able to survive.
Metabolism is not just about calories but how our body creates energy and utilize energy. This can be influenced by exercise, nutrition, sleep, and environment. To optimize your metabolism, it is essential to optimize these four factors. How much you eat and exercise is just a part of our metabolism and there are more important factors that we need to be mindful of, if one of the objective for you is to age healthier. Metabolism can be trained to improve its efficiency by improving your exercise, nutrition, sleep and your environment.
Kota Shimada
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