The Randle Cycle: Wrong or Just Misunderstood?

Hey, guys!  Thanks for reading!  This time I'll be talking a bit about the Randle Hypothesis, which has ended up being the basis for a lot of the nutritional information out there.  It's probably the reason why you think that fat is bad for you.  Just a little warning: I'm still in the middle of reading the scientific articles that have to do with the Randle Cycle, so don't expect anything too detailed, and, as always, take what I say with a grain of salt.

Though maybe not this much.

Basically, in 1963, Philip Randle decided to study how metabolism works at a cellular level.  He took some muscle tissue (I think it was heart muscle) and dropped some fat onto it.  The muscle cells stopped metabolizing glucose and used the fat for fuel instead, so Randle theorized that the presence of fat halts metabolization of glucose and leads to the production of fat.  In shorter words, Randle said that eating fat makes you fat.

The silent killer?

The thing is, this study was done in 1963.  We now know many things that Randle had no idea even existed.  Many of the enzymes involved in energy production,

This again.

weren't discovered until the mid-90s.  As in a full thirty years later.  And then, after we found out which chemicals existed in the first place, it took a while for us to find the exact pathways.  This:

Notice the pathway from citrate to the inhibition of the glucose reaction chain.

became this:

And now notice how the glucose chain is completely unchanged by the presence of fat.

as new experiments were conducted.

Now, I grabbed both of these from the Randle Cycle's Wikipedia page, which I hesitantly include a link to.  The reason for this is, as you may remember from my last post, that I think this page is very poorly written.  Basically, the author of the article jumped back and forth between the Randle cycle and the recently-dubbed (by Dr. Walker) "Anti-Randle cycle" with little to no warning.  The article seems rather wishy-washy on the whole topic and unable to pin down what, exactly, the Randle cycle actually is.

Meh, no one's reading this anyway.

The main point of this post is to basically say that many large organizations, including the American Diabetic Association, still use Randle's study to outline treatment plans for diabetics.  Diet plans include high amounts of glucose and low amounts of fat, which is the exact opposite of what this

I'm going to keep using it.

describes.

Next time: cheat days and more personal thoughts!  See you then, and thanks for reading!

I Went to a Conference

Hey, guys!  Sorry it's been pretty quiet over here.  Truth is, I haven't been doing too much new stuff this week.  That's not to say I haven't been learning anything, but mostly I've been applying what I have learned to papers I've been reading.  Later this week I'll probably get into some of that.

A taste of what awaits.

Now, as should come as a surprise to all who don't actually read my weird post titles, I attended a conference/seminar thing yesterday about the link between diabetes and cardiovascular disease.  Since it was aimed towards doctors and medical students and was primarily about what methods physicians could use to diagnose and treat disease, I was completely lost for part of the time.

Pictured: me.

The whole spiel consisted of discussing insulin resistance (which I've been working on, yay!) and associated risks that have to do with cholesterol and liproproteins (which I need to work more on, since I haven't really gotten into biomarkers yet).

What interested me, though, was the differences in what Dr. Walker has studied and what the general consensus is on the origin of insulin resistance.  As I'll get into later in more detail, the American Diabetic Association and other groups of its ilk follow a rather outdated and misinterpreted hypothesis called the Randle Hypothesis, formulated in 1963 by a guy named Randle (weird, right?).  I would link to the Wikipedia page, but it is horribly written and I hate it.

Anyway, the gist of Randle's theory is that the presence of fat controls how a cell metabolizes fuel in the mitochondria.  However, as more recent studies show, it looks like glucose is what really controls metabolism.

The point of that whole tangent above is basically to say that many large corporations use old or outdated studies to recommend medications.  As I heard last night, the cause of insulin resistance can be traced to not ectopic fat, but visceral fat.

More pictures of blobs.

According to many doctors the presence of visceral fat, which is fat that is not stored as a layer around muscle but within the abdominal cavity, leads to insulin resistance.  The speaker gave his reasons but I kind of spaced out and didn't really understand what he was saying.

I have no idea what you're talking about.

The thing is, his sources date back to 1997.  As in almost twenty years ago.  Now, I'm not taking sides on the visceral fat vs. ectopic fat issue (okay, a little bit, but let's ignore that fact for now).  Using sources that are twenty years old (and also disputed as an added fact) doesn't make room for any new information that could emerge and change things.  Just an observation.

In other news, hearkening back to the terrible Wikipedia article I mentioned above, I'm going to be helping Dr. Walker and his students edit the page to actually make sense!  I'm contributing to Wikipedia!  But...I'll get more into that in my next post.

Thanks for reading!