A lesser known link between calories and body temperature

Significant calorie reduction is not an easy task for most decision makers. But it is unquestionably linked to a number of health benefits, ranging from a longer lifespan to a much lower chance of developing cancer, heart disease, diabetes and neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

A new study by a team of research professors Dr. Scripps Bruno Conti and Dr. Gary Siuzdak, highlights the important role of body temperature in achieving these health benefits, induced by diet. Through their discoveries, scientists are paving the way for the creation of a drug that mimics the beneficial effects of low body temperature.

Dr. Conti has spent years studying how and why caloric restriction leads to better health, with the ultimate goal of translating research results into drugs that can mimic what happens naturally when a person eats less.

It is already known that when mammals eat less food, their body temperature drops. “It’s a way to help us conserve energy until food is available again,” explains Dr. Conti. This finding makes sense, given that up to half of what we eat each day is converted into energy that is consumed to maintain our body temperature.

Dr. Conti’s previous work has shown that reducing the temperature can increase lifespan regardless of caloric restriction and that this effect involves the activation of certain cellular processes, most of which remained unknown at the time.

“It is not easy to identify what determines the beneficial effects of calorie restriction,” says Dr. Conti. “Does it reduce calories on your own or change your body temperature, which usually happens when we consume fewer calories? Or is it a combination of both? ”

In this latest research, now under discussion, Conti and his team designed an experiment that allowed them to independently evaluate the effects of reduced nutrients and body temperature.

They analyzed and compared data obtained from a group of mice that had caloric restriction and were kept at room temperature (approximately 22 degrees Celsius), with those of another group of mice kept at 30 degrees Celsius. The warmer environment has invoked “thermoneutrality”, a condition in which most animals cannot easily reduce their body temperature.

“The data we collected showed that temperature has an effect equal to or greater than nutrients on metabolism during calorie restriction,” says Conti. In particular, the team provided the first complete profile of metabolites that are modified by temperature reduction. Metabolites are constituents resulting from the process of metabolism (all biochemical reactions   that occur inside the  body ).

Through a computational analysis of the results from both groups of mice, the scientists were able to identify the metabolites that were most responsible for triggering temperature changes. They also showed in a separate experiment that it is possible to take certain metabolites as a medicine to influence body temperature.

Conti says further work to validate temperature-induced changes during calorie restriction should provide new targets for future drugs, which he calls “temperature mimetics,” and which could provide health-promoting effects without the need to reduce body temperature.

Until the future medicines are obtained, the Dahna application, through all the menus offered, offers you a correct, healthy and personalized approach to the diet by choosing the right foods, reducing sugar consumption, eliminating fried foods, replacing juices and soft drinks with fruit. , adequate water consumption, introduction of physical activity of at least 30 minutes a day. Try the Dahna app with confidence!

Source here.