Great Health Part 4

Improving Your Metabolic Health.

Great health requires resilience in the following 4 domains:
1.  Physical
2.  Social
3.  Mental
4.  Emotional

Promoting healthy energy utilization and storage by understanding the NEXUS of intermittent exhaustion of stored liver glycogen through a healthy DIET and EXERCISE is the JUST RIGHT STORAGE or optimum condition to live a healthy life.

What is the optimum exercise for metabolic health?

Exercise that depletes stored liver glycogen and builds metabolically healthy heart, lungs and muscles.

Steady state exercise that is prolonged and exhausting will deplete glycogen stores and improve muscle endurance.  It also increases appetite.

High intensity interval exercise rapidly depletes liver glycogen storage and also triglycerides because it increases adrenalin levels to 17 times baseline which slowly declines to baseline after 22 minutes.  Adrenalin stimulates adrenergic receptors in the liver which cause glycogen to release glucose to the body and also triglycerides to the body for energy.

Intense exercise recruits greater numbers of muscle fibers per unit time including fast twitch type 2 muscle fibers which are powerful but fatigue quickly.  After brief bouts of high intensity interval exercise the liver glycogen is partially depleted and the fast twitch muscles are also exhausted.  High intensity interval exercise also results in the production of lactic acid caused by the high metabolic demand and inadequate numbers of mitochondria, the energy factory within the cell, to process the supplied energy which therefore becomes lactic acid that causes the burn and fatigue of intense exercise.

After the intense exercise is over, the lactic acid released from the muscle is metabolized in the liver to pyruvate, an energy byproduct of glucose metabolism.  Unlike glucose which requires active transport into cells, pyruvate passes into cells and into the energy furnace of the mitochondria where ATP, a chemically useable form of energy is made.  Because the ATP made is unstable, like the manna from heaven, it rapidly breaks down into heat,

That essentially means that intense stop and go exercise depletes liver glycogen powering rapid movement initially and producing heat afterwards.  Moreover the overloaded muscles and their mitochondria respond to the stress to make greater numbers of energy factories or mitochondria.  The result is a higher capacity for aerobic steady state exercise, an increased VO2 max which measures the maximum distance one can cover in 6 minutes or alternatively the time to run a 10K race.

Intense stop and go or interval exercise is 150% superior to moderate steady state or aerobic exercise in increasing aerobic fitness.

Moreover, in a 15 week study of individuals on an eat what you want diet comparing no exercise, with 50 minutes of steady state exercise and 4 minutes of high intensity interval exercise only the later group reduced their weight by 6.5 lbs.  Steady state exercise increases energy expenditure and appetite.  High intensity interval exercise increased energy expenditure the same with a decreased appetite due to adrenalin.