From owner-metabolic-reg@net.bio.net Thu May 26 23:00:00 1994
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From: camn@uniwa.uwa.edu.au (Cameron Neylon)
Newsgroups: bionet.metabolic-reg
Subject: Re: Dog Metabolism
Date: 27 May 1994 00:50:14 GMT
Organization: The University of Western Australia
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vprasad@uoguelph.ca (Victor Prasad) writes:

>	just curious but do dogs mobilize glycogen differently than 
>humans?  do they have to have carbs to burn fat?  it seems they are able 
>to liberate more nrg - they are hyper, run fast, never seem to tire.  any 
>help?

I have no idea about dogs I must admit, but some (possibly) related
research done here (university of Western Australia) on marathon
runnners might help.

It was shown that marathon runners seem to always run the marathon in
very similar times, and as soon as you try to speed them up, e.g. with a
treadmill, they reach an exhaustion point before finishing the marathon,
and are forced to slow down.

The interesting things was that the point where the unn er was forced to
slow down conincided very closely with the switch from carbohydrate
fuels (tho whether glucose or glycogen I can't remember) to fats.
Carbohydrate usage actually translated very closley to a faster speed,
and when forced to run on fats teh runner slowed down to about 70% of
teh original pace.

So back tot he original question, do dogs therefore have more available
glucose, greater glycogen stores, or use glycogen more efficiently, or
are they able to mobilise fats faster. BTW what is the SMR for a dog
anyway?

Lets get something going in this group!


Cameron Neylon, Honours, Dept of Biochemistry,
University of Western Australia

+619 368-2717 or more regularly camn@uniwa.uwa.edu.au

Biochemistry: noun, The art of sitting, late at night, transferring 
              ridiculously small volumes of liquid with one hand and
	      attempting to hold onto one's sanity with the other.

.