How to Upregulate Metabolism

While soy and turmeric can suppress human fat cells, not all vegetarians eat curried tofu. So, this still doesn’t explain why vegetarians are so much slimmer, on average, than meat-eaters. Well, we’re getting closer to an answer.

The reason I chose to major in biophysics, rather than biochemistry, is because of diagrams like this. This is the simplified version of human metabolism. The real deal is controlled by about 25,000 genes.

Let me focus in on one in particular. This appears to be the enzyme that does much of the heavy lifting: carnitine palmitoyltransferase—CPT here—shovels the fat that we eat into the furnaces in our cells.

The more active it is, the more fat we burn. That’s where a vegetarian diet seems to come in. Here’s our man CPT, significantly upregulated in vegetarians, boosted by about 60%. We’re not sure why, but that may help explain why those eating vegetarian are so slim.

To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring, watch the above video. This is just an approximation of the audio contributed by veganmontreal.

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• H. Karlic, D. Schuster, F. Varga, G. Klindert, A. Lapin, A. Haslberger, & M. Handschur. Vegetarian diet affects genes of oxidative metabolism and collagen synthesis. Ann Nutr Metab, 53(1):29-32, 2008.

• enzimas
• grasa
• metabolismo
• mitocondria
• obesidad
• pérdida de peso
• vegetarianos