ATP, Thermogenesis and Leptin Man's Electrons

A little update on the adventures of a man we call Leptin Man here at The Asylum, Jack Kruse.  I skimmed his latest (6 page!) manifesto, and near as I can figure, his focus is on ATP stores.  His metabolic pathway du jour is the Pentose Phosphate Pathway (PPP).  Among many many words, he writes:

TRUTH BOMB:  This pathway has only a few major endpoints, but they are all massively important for human life.  It is designed to optimally restore RNA and DNA synthesis by providing maximum recycling of ATP;  and it allows for optimal formation of bio-energenic substrates to make replenish the mitochondria’s ability to increase total adenine nucleotides to re-establish optimal ATP stores from beta oxidation of fats.

THE KETOGENIC ATHLETE ALERT:   The reason fat burning takes 12-24 months to get maximum ATP production, is because the PPP uses D-ribose as its energy intermediate chemical to replenish the products of ATP hydrolysis. It seems performance athletes and their trainers missed this pathway in human biochemistry.    {all blue emphasis is mine}

OK ... I have neither the time nor the inclination to wade through the entire thing.  Be my guest, but at this point it is not even good entertainment.  Rather, I want to point out one huge thing wrong with where Jack is going here.  Remember thermogenesis?  Ice baths and all that jazz?  Well, thermogenesis is at odds with maximizing ATP.  Period.  The vast majority of the ATP produced from oxidation of either glucose or fatty acids is produced in the electron transport chain, the ETC.  The ETC basically creates little electrical potentials (voltages, like little batteries) by pumping H+ ions (protons)  to one side of a membrane, and harnesses that energy by letting those H+ flow back through a protein complex to "power" ATP production (Wikipedia has a good summary).  The "uncoupling" protein UCP1 is called that because it uncouples this, and instead of the energy being harnesses to phosphorylate ADP to ATP, it is released as heat.   It's like putting a short across the terminals of a battery -- rather than it powering a motor or creating light with a bulb or something, current flows through the wire. 

So, if you're trying to optimize your mitochondrial function, or something like that, eating electron-dense food (whatever that is) to maximize ATP production, don't do it while sitting in ice baths to become cold adapted and tap into your ancient thermogenesis pathway  Understand that these two metabolic "endpoints" are at odds with one another.  Jack is full of it as usual.  

One last thing caught my eye ...

The ATP-CP and glycolytic pathways are horribly inefficient at making large amounts of ATP to replenish energy stores. So when the exercise or diet continues the gradient of decline steepens quickly. This leaves “more space” in your electron chain, and further throws off the nanoscopic precision required to make ATP well. It means can not replace your ATP needs fast enough to offset the losses from your behaviors. Your brain makes decisions (low dopamine) to fuel with carbs because it has learned that ATP can be made fast this way, but your cells can’t fully re-energize this way because the fast fill system never fills the gas tank fully!!!! In fact, long chain fatty acids have huge energy potential for the host. One molecule of glucose has only six carbons. Glucose can make 28-30 ATP from it. One molecule of an 18 carbon stearic acid, a FFA, has three times as many carbons as glucose but makes five times the amount of ATP (147 ATP), while only having two times the caloric density of glucose. This shows you precisely why a calorie is not a calorie and why calories in and calories out makes little sense thermodynamically.

Jack posted this and removed it from some paleo group on FB and deleted it when it was countered by me on this blog back in August.  Jack the Quack is Back with Smack! But a Calorie is Still a Calorie.  Bottom line, it is amazing how closely the ATP generated per gram of substrate (glucose or fatty acid) relates to the caloric content attributed to them.  Not really ....