[HN Gopher] Energy-based model explains how chronic stress trans...
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Energy-based model explains how chronic stress transforms into
disease over time
Author : andrewstetsenko
Score : 129 points
Date : 2024-10-20 14:32 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sciencedirect.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sciencedirect.com)
| bloated5048 wrote:
| Does it mean exercising regularly does the same?
| mattmaroon wrote:
| Exercise seems to stimulate the mechanisms it's claiming stress
| depresses, so probably no.
| bloated5048 wrote:
| But exercise does use lots of energy. Probably more than
| stress.
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| I had a somewhat similar question about exercise vs
| physically demanding work, since the former helps to have a
| healthy heart and the latter seems to do the opposite.
| Explanations I've found were tied to the average daily
| heart rate. Exercises are intense but it's only a few hours
| per week, and over time they tend to lower the average
| heart rate. Physical work is typically less straining but
| it takes a big portion of the week and as the result
| increases the average heart rate.
|
| I guess the problem of exercise (intense but short) vs
| chronic stress (moderate but 24x7) could have a similar
| explanation.
| mattmaroon wrote:
| I would be willing to bet that there are just confounding
| factors. People who do physical work differ from people
| who do not in so many ways that it would be impossible to
| do any sort of controlled study.
| mattmaroon wrote:
| I don't think the claim is that it just uses energy, it's
| that it uses energy to the detriment of other processes.
|
| The body is extraordinarily complex, so I don't think you
| can extrapolate that to anything else that uses energy.
|
| Any garden variety gym rat will tell you that when you
| worked out you eat a lot more. And that may be the same for
| stress, but perhaps what your body does with the energy
| when you exercise is different.
| anon84873628 wrote:
| Exercise modulates hunger (generally, cardio increases
| perceived hunger while resistance training actually
| blunts it for a time). But people putting in work at the
| gym are already in a health conscious mindset and will
| apply that to their food choices, even if they aren't on
| an explicit diet plan. If you just left a gallon of sweat
| on the treadmill you're probably not gonna buy a pizza or
| McDonald's burger in the way home. It just feels like an
| obvious step backwards in the moment.
|
| Meanwhile, being in a stressed state that reduces
| executive function is going to lead people to the quick,
| easy, hyper palatable, high energy density, unhealthy
| food options available.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| The body tends to use the same amount of energy regardless
| of what you do in a day. You can certainly over exercise
| which causes undue stress on the body. However other than
| an adaptive period at the start of regular exercise your
| body adapts to the increased caloric use from exercise by
| down regulating other processes to conserve energy.
| Typically an excess of calories is used by production of
| lipid fluid in adipose tissue and over expression of global
| inflammation. Once you begin exercising regularly the body
| generally stops using stored lipids for extra energy to
| compensate for the exercise and instead down regulates
| inefficient and generally harmful processes like random
| global inflammation.
|
| As mentioned the Goldilocks zones are where you're not
| forcing the body beyond what it can safely allocate to
| exercise in a day without causing stress in other
| processes. Generally though that Goldilocks zone is
| significantly greater than most people do in exercise in a
| week, but would typically fall in the zone of "moderate"
| exercise from a clinical point of view. This is effectively
| 3-6 times the expenditure of energy from rest for 150
| minutes per week spread over a week for at least 10 minutes
| of moderately strenuous exercise at 70% heart rate per
| session. Most people in their 40's or 50's would typically
| find this fairly grueling, but that's because of that
| homeostatic adaptation - the body resists changing its
| homeostasis and induces all sorts of negative experiences
| during the adaptation phase. Once you've adapted the
| opposite feelings present for the same reason - you begin
| to crave a routine of exercise because you body resists the
| adaptation to a more sedentary life.
|
| N.b., This is why while exercise definitely helps lose
| weight, it's primarily by managing inflammation and mood.
| This is why the only significant way you can lose weight
| over time is to reduce caloric intake materially under your
| homeostatic energy consumption.
| cyberpunk wrote:
| How did you come by this information and do you have any
| sources / further reading on this?
| anon84873628 wrote:
| This is basically exercise physiology 101.
|
| I'm not saying that to be snarky. Just as an FYI that it
| can be kinda hard to even describe how one came across
| this knowledge. Like asking someone how they know LC
| circuits act as a resonator.
|
| And I guess exercise science is even less popular than
| physics. You can find the latter on Wikipedia, and a bit
| of the former too:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exercise_physiology
|
| There is a lot of great YouTube content about exercise
| physiology too, if you can cut through the "bro science"
| ecosystem.
| shagie wrote:
| Kurzgesagt - In a Nutshell : We Need to Rethink Exercise
| (Updated Version) -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSSkDos2hzo
|
| Their videos have a section where they link the sources.
| In this case https://sites.google.com/view/sources-
| workoutparadox
| anon84873628 wrote:
| I wouldn't be so sure. The brain is responsible for about
| 20% of resting metabolic rate, which translates to 300-350
| calories per day for the average person.
|
| 300 calories is about the same as 30 minutes of zone 3
| cardio (70-80% max heart rate, i.e. pretty high perceived
| exertion).
|
| Most people in an exercise routine would only do that a
| couple times per week.
|
| An "overactive" brain, day in day out, could add up to more
| than most people deliberately exercise.
| sbdhzjd wrote:
| My understanding is yes.
|
| _However_ moderate exercise (and stress!) stimulates the body
| to activate trash /repair/rebuild mechanisms which improve
| health overall.
|
| EDIT:
|
| For example, aerobic exercise stimulates capillary growth
| lowering pressure required for blood flow. Periodic, moderate
| fasting triggers the elimination of accumulated fats which
| might have toxins built up in them (or have oxidized) Healthy,
| emotional stress teaches us to deal with inevitable tragedies.
| mattmaroon wrote:
| So the upshot is that your body is using its energy to deal with
| stress rather than other problems?
| imjonse wrote:
| It is about a biological/physiological model based on energy
| consumption when stressed, not the machine learning energy-based
| models championed by Yann LeCunn.
| omani wrote:
| doesn't matter what model you use to explain it.
|
| cortisol.
|
| too much of it or too regularly opens the door to many diseases.
| manmal wrote:
| Are there any proxy markers we can use to model cortisol, right
| now? Like HRV or simply continuous heart rate monitoring?
| mojosam wrote:
| it sounds like the authors are suggesting that additional energy
| usage caused by stress can, in isolation from other causes, be a
| mechanism for disease. But that doesn't make much sense:
| - our metabolisms are adaptable, so why wouldn't this increase in
| energy use simply be offset by an increase in energy production?
| It can't be that people who are stressed in general aren't
| getting enough energy, because that would correlate stress with
| weight loss, but I would argue that there are plenty of
| overweight people with stress. - if the argument is
| that an increased metabolism by itself is the culprit, then why
| wouldn't people with higher metabolisms in general -- like anyone
| who exercises regularly, but certainly athletes -- not also
| experience more disease? If your answer is "that's different for
| some reason", then that means that increased energy usage and
| metabolism is not by itself the cause, which suggests it may not
| be the cause at all.
|
| Furthermore, even granting the supposition that stress requires
| increased energy usage, their abstract doesn't make much sense:
| - "Living organisms have a limited capacity to consume energy."
| Okay, so that means that no matter how stressed we get, there's a
| cap to the energy we can use. But how is that relevant, since it
| also applies to exercise or other energy utilization by the body?
| Why does a limited capacity to consume energy only apply to
| stress? - "Overconsumption of energy by [stress
| handling] brain-body processes leads to ... excess energy
| expenditure above the organism's optimum". Thats basically a
| tautology, but more importantly, it doesn't tell us that energy
| consumption above "optimal" -- which seems extremely vague -- is
| a bad thing. - "In turn, [excess energy consumption
| above the optimal] accelerates physiological decline in cells,
| laboratory animals, and humans, and may drive biological aging".
| So that "may" is a pretty good reason to dismiss this, since
| again why wouldn't this lead to increased disease among athletes
| or anyone with higher metabolism? - "Mechanistically,
| the energetic restriction of growth, maintenance and repair
| processes leads to the progressive wear-and-tear of molecular and
| organ systems" Maybe, but why are they energetically restricted
| if metabolism has increased to provide more energy? And again,
| why don't we then see increased disease and aging in anyone who
| exercises regularly, since that exercise not only uses energy
| that restricts growth, maintenance and repair, but exercise
| causes more need for repair.
|
| I think the core problem is that it's all going to boil down to
| how you define "optimum", which the authors conveniently don't.
| The authors are going to be left with defining "optimum" as
| meaning "that energy usage which does not cause disease". But
| that's no different than simply claiming "stress causes disease",
| so this model describes nothing, since it tells us nothing about
| how to identify non-optimum energy usage or how non-optimum
| energy usage causes disease.
| h4l wrote:
| Humans have a massive capacity to vary energy use. Highly
| trained endurance athletes like professional road cyclists and
| triathletes can average 3x or more the typical daily energy
| expenditure of a non-athlete on a long term basis. The idea
| that psychological stress can overwhelm the body's ability to
| produce energy does not seem credible to me.
| anon84873628 wrote:
| Those people have trained very deliberately over years to
| reach that level of performance, on top of an innate genetic
| disposition.
|
| Undoubtedly, in absolute terms they have a higher capacity to
| withstand the negative physical effects of psychosocial
| stress as described in the paper, precisely because of these
| physiological adaptations.
|
| If regular people trained themselves to deal with stress then
| they would have a higher capacity too.
|
| The paper is referring to the maximum capacity of a
| particular organism at a particular moment in time. It
| doesn't assert that the capacity is uniform across a species
| or doesn't change over time.
| anon84873628 wrote:
| >Okay, so that means that no matter how stressed we get,
| there's a cap to the energy we can use. But how is that
| relevant, since it also applies to exercise or other energy
| utilization by the body? Why does a limited capacity to consume
| energy only apply to stress?
|
| It doesn't. That limited capacity to consume energy applies to
| exercise, brain activity, thermogenesis, digestion, and every
| other biological process as well. It is a fundamental aspect of
| cellular biology and a major focus in the field of exercise
| physiology.
|
| Fitness training is the very slow and deliberate process of
| pushing these limits tiny percentages higher.
|
| I suggest you build some practical and theoretical knowledge of
| the field before dismissing the paper.
| hammock wrote:
| This paper reminds me of the "insight" / factoid that all mammals
| are basically born with the same rough number of heartbeats, and
| then they die. Smaller animals like mice have shorter lifespans
| and faster heartbeats. Larger ones like whales and elephants have
| slower heartbeats and longer lives.
|
| The humorous (and obviously false, though apparently not if this
| paper is out there) corollary is that any exercise and non-
| sedentary lifestyle means you lose years of your life
| kelipso wrote:
| I think the theory is that exercise has many other benefits
| that make up for the increased energy usage.
| mrtesthah wrote:
| Naked mole rats live over 30 years, because they have
| additional copies of a gene known to protect against DNA
| damage.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| This is the battery "theory," and is obviously untrue from all
| evidence collected. Exercise and specifically improvement of
| VO2max, which is the bodies ability to pump and process a
| volume of blood and oxygen in a period of time, are some of the
| strongest predictors of life and health span. A lack of
| exercise also transpires to significantly increase global
| inflammation in the body - in fact regular exercise forces the
| body to adapt to a new homeostatic use of calories away from
| random inflammation to conserve daily caloric expenditure
| towards that exercise. There's no evidence to support the
| battery "theory," despite certain anti science politicians
| popularizing it.
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| > This is the battery "theory," and is obviously untrue from
| all evidence collected. Exercise and specifically improvement
| of VO2max, which is the bodies ability to pump and process a
| volume of blood and oxygen in a period of time, are some of
| the strongest predictors of life and health span.
|
| Exercise and specifically improvement of VO2max also decrease
| your average heart rate, so it's quite aligned with the
| battery theory.
| TrainedMonkey wrote:
| OG study that found a roughly same number of heartbeats was
| only concerned with averages -
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9316546/ . Interestingly
| humans are outliers with 2-3x the expected number of
| heartbeats. The way the data was presented always gave me a
| strong "everything looks linear when plotted on a log scale
| with big marker" vibe... however it could be totally possible
| that there is some correlation there.
|
| Maybe evolutionary, there is optimal amount of time for
| organisms to survive relative to their size. Organism size,
| in turn, correlates with heart size and heart size correlates
| with how fast it beats. Probably totally missing the mark,
| but if it was true, it would be interesting to look into why
| there are outliers.
|
| Anywho, I find it humorous to think about a battery theory
| car analogy - "every car has a preset number of miles and
| maintenance would decrease usable lifespan of the car because
| you need to drive to the mechanic".
| mcoliver wrote:
| Haven't done the math but maybe they aren't so disconnected. If
| I can trade off an elevated heart rate of 170 for an hour every
| day or two in exchange for dropping my resting heartbeat from
| 70 to 50, I should end up with more years to use those finite
| heartbeats. As with most things in life it's about balance.
| Extremes and absolutes in most everything tend to result in
| poor outcomes. You don't want to be sitting 24/7 or running
| 24/7.
| hammock wrote:
| Do the people downvoting my comment think I believe in this
| theory, or is there another reason?
|
| "Factoid" means untrue by definition. I thought it an
| interesting novelty
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Down voting on HN on HN seems to be a sign of "this idea
| breaks the model I have in my head, and my biases tell me I
| can't be mistaken."
| jgneff wrote:
| I think this study is related to two books I read this summer:
| _Burn_ , by Herman Pontzer, presents his "constrained energy
| expenditure hypothesis," and _Exercised_ , by Daniel E.
| Lieberman, discusses his "costly repair hypothesis."
|
| Together, they try to explain why exercise can force your body to
| stop using its energy to destroy itself (inflammation, autoimmune
| diseases) and instead use its energy to restore itself (releasing
| antioxidants, repairing damage).
| nobrains wrote:
| When I search (amazon, google, and other searches) for one
| these books, the other also shows up as a very close result.
| And vice versa as well.
| azeirah wrote:
| Kurtzgesagt had a video about this very recently too. About
| calory expenditure.
| discordance wrote:
| This one: https://youtu.be/vSSkDos2hzo
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Link to full paper:
|
| https://www.picardlab.org/uploads/7/7/8/4/77845210/2022_bobb...
|
| Lots of interesting stuff about mitochondrial allostatic load.
| It's essentially a Goldilocks problem - the car that's never
| driven breaks down quickly when you take it out for a drive, but
| if you're constantly pushing the accelerator and slamming the
| brakes, the car's lifetime is cut in half. The paper seems to
| focus on social and psychological factors that unnecessarily
| increase stress:
|
| > "From this energetic perspective, the evolution of likes and
| dislikes, feelings and emotions, and approach/withdrawal
| behaviors arose to minimize the energetic cost of life."
|
| Case example: Someone just asked me about my holiday season plans
| and my blood pressure probably went through the roof... I think
| I'm going to send them this paper.
| krackers wrote:
| Diseases like chronic fatigue syndrome are thought to be the
| result of mitochondrial dysfunction, right? Maybe that also
| fits in here.
| tmshapland wrote:
| So what do you do about stress? How do you recognize it's
| happening? I found this part informative:
|
| "Stress reactivity occurs specifically in situations that
| diminish one's control and where the prospect of being negatively
| evaluated, rejected, and/or shamed are contextually manipulated
| (Dickerson et al., 2004)."
|
| I find I get the most stressed when I'm excited about a new
| challenge -- a new work project, seeing a path to achieving a
| goal I've been working towards for a while. When I start to feel
| too excited (or in the framework of this paper, I start to expend
| too much energy and my heart rate is elevated thinking about all
| I want to do to overcome the challenge), I can generally reign in
| the stress by reminding myself that failure happens, my peers
| will understand it, and I don't have complete control over
| anything anyway.
| vmasto wrote:
| Stress most times doesn't reveal itself like that. What you're
| describing is short term excitement and perhaps anxiety.
|
| Stress is a silent killer. It's basically being mostly unhappy,
| feeling unfulfilled and trapped. It's a spectrum that can range
| from simply being unhappy to being deeply depressed.
| diskevich wrote:
| Stress management isn't just about understanding the problem--
| it's about actionable solutions.
|
| Exercise, even a brief walk, reduces cortisol and boosts mood-
| enhancing endorphins.
|
| Meditation and mindfulness, once seen as trendy, are now
| scientifically proven to rewire the brain for better stress
| handling.
|
| Nutrition plays a surprising role; omega-3-rich foods like salmon
| can lower stress hormones.
|
| Quality sleep, especially deep sleep, allows the brain to reset
| and repair.
|
| Finally, don't underestimate the power of social support. Sharing
| your struggles with others can significantly lighten your mental
| load.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Agree, with all in full sans the last one. Of course, if you're
| struggling, seek support.
|
| We all have bad days or even bad weeks, life happens and often
| it's best to learn this. The current fad (?) of "I'm going to
| experess my non-positive feelings as they are all the time"
| gives too much weight to what are normal passing moments.
|
| I don't want to say being a hypochondriac is normalized (else I
| might get canceled) but... Words, they create worlds. It's
| important to be mindful of what we choose to create.
|
| Belief drives behavior, and when allowed to perpetuate the
| victim mentality can cause unnecessary (semi) permanent damage.
| It's perfectly normal to experience some pain. Don't make more
| of it than necessary.
| gregwebs wrote:
| Lets agree for the sake of argument that if the body does not
| have enough energy to do what it needs that causes harm. Then why
| not eat more food to deal with the problem?
|
| I think this model is missing a critical component: the bodies
| ability to use energy effectively is limited by having the proper
| nutrients available. The easiest example being a deficiency of B
| vitamins since they are used for energy metabolism. Many other
| factors can impair energy metabolism and just eating more will
| not fix the situation.
|
| Whereas with this model we have statements that seem too over-
| simplified:
|
| > The organism's energy consumption capacity is biologically
| limited
|
| This seems overstated- we know that certain athletes can consume
| 2x or even 3x a resting amount to support physical exertion- the
| human body seems designed to be able to produce more power for
| physical exertion when needed by consuming more energy (in
| addition to making long-term adaptations to make energy usage
| more efficient).
|
| I also think that readers of this paper may take away an
| understated understanding of the possible negative effects of
| energy deficiency. Any physiological problem could be impacted by
| energy metabolism. For example, even if something is known to be
| caused by a deficiency in a nutrient that cannot be synthesized
| by the body, it's still possible that improved energy metabolism
| might be able to reduce the usage of that nutrient in some
| pathways to conserve more for where it is needed.
| t0bia_s wrote:
| - _the human body seems designed to be able to produce more
| power for physical exertion when needed by consuming more
| energy (in addition to making long-term adaptations to make
| energy usage more efficient)._
|
| Most top athletes are retiring around 35. Their bodies are
| ruined like those who need to physically work hardly every day.
| They look elder as well.
|
| We are not machines that will do more when given more sources
| without consequences.
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