All I Want for Christmas ...
A short break to share some things I've been doing "just for fun". Some people collect classic works of art. Some literature. One thing this blog gig has done to me is it has turned me into a collector of old scientific literature! Thank you Gary Taubes. Seriously!
Maybe it's my training, but I am a reference hawk. When I read "new" things, use of quotes to denote that these things are not necessarily new, just new to me, I like to track down sources before proceeding. This is, after all, the purpose of referencing.
In 1965, the American Physiological Society published an eight-hundred-page Handbook of Physiology dedicated to the latest research on adipose-tissue metabolism. As this volume documented, several fundamental facts about the relationship between fat and carbohydrate metabolism had become clear. First, the body will burn carbohydrates for fuel, as long as blood sugar is elevated and the reserve supply of carbohydrates stored as glycogen in the liver and muscles is not being depleted. As these carbohydrate reserves begin to be tapped, however, or if there’s a sudden demand for more energy, then the flow of fatty acids from the fat tissue into the circulation accelerates to take up the slack. Meanwhile, a significant portion of the carbohydrates we consume and all of the fat will be stored as fat in our fat cells before being used for fuel. It’s this stored fat, in the form of fatty acids, that will then provide from 50 to 70 percent of all the energy we expend over the course of a day. “Adipose tissue is no longer considered a static tissue,” wrote the Swiss physiologist Albert Renold, who coedited the Handbook of Physiology; “it is recognized as what it is: the major site of active regulation of energy storage and mobilization, one of the primary control mechanisms responsible for the survival of any given organism.” Since the excessive accumulation of fat in the fat tissue is the problem in obesity, we need to understand this primary control mechanism.
Gary Taubes in Good Calories, Bad CaloriesKindle Locations 7836-7847
At that time I had tried to track down a copy of this book. Why 800 pages that Taubes distilled essentially down to a list with the caption: "In 1965, hormonal regulation of adipose tissue looked like this: at least eight hormones that worked to release fat from the adipose tissue and one, insulin, that worked to put it there." (KL 7948-7950) I'm not sure why, but I was unsuccessful or wasn't looking in the right places. Or perhaps I got sidetracked by finding the other lynchpin reference of GCBC, Newsholme & Start's Regulation in Metabolism. Whatever the reason, I never pursued it further. Then I caught a bug a few weeks ago and came across a listing for this book from a used bookseller. For just a few cents more than $10, I ordered my copy. It arrived on Saturday. Call me a nut, I don't care. I actually got giddy when I opened the box and an almost 50 y.o. book described as in "good" condition turned out to be pristine. It has those shiny pages of days of old. An appointment card likely for the doctor whose library it came from with a Crestwood 4 phone extension. Most youngsters don't know that the first two digits of a phone number used to be the town you were in, as in this doc's phone number was 274-XXXX. Silly, I know.
I took a few pics and posted them to FB. Here they are.
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| No jacket cover, sorry for the blur. It's a heavy book and only thin because of the thin paper. |
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I was surprised on random (careful!) flipping to see this picture and for some reason that FMS jumped out at me. I look forward to reading and seeing if I can figure out what that actually was. Atkins spoke of some FMS in the urine of people during weight loss in the original book, but this disappeared without explanation. |
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This is one of the rare pages of color photographs. Sorry for the gory nature. This is from the section on brown adipose tissue. |
I don't intend to read this cover to cover. For starters, the page count does not do this volume justice -- with the small font and large page-size, this is easily in the thousands if not tens of thousand page range were it presented in a usual mass media typeset. But I do expect to refer to this from time to time, as time permits. It freakin' amazes me to no end how much we DID know back then ... with such limited technology at that! I fully expect much to be outdated but there's a lot of "basis" going on there. This baby is a keeper, I might just buy another copy so I don't ruin it.
But ... I'd prefer an electronic edition. The APS published this online a couple years ago. The full listing is at the end of this post so you can see it is quite extensive! It's broken down into so many articles though, none of which I have access to. Ahh well ... a geek can dream ;-)
I've often faulted Taubes for citing a then-40 year old physiology text to support the basics of his hypothesis. This is no ordinary textbook, rather more of a journal. In retrospect his citation is for the purposes of gravitas -- it's a major work indeed. But the topic he used it for could have, and should have, been referenced to other more recent, readily available, and even works referenced elsewhere in his book. In using this book, in the manner presented, he gives the misleading impression that the sum total of its contents were conclusive and in agreement with his hypothesis. But the topic of triglyceride-fatty acid cycling is pretty common stuff these days. It is nothing new, nor was it something suppressed after WWII or even, what, after Viet Nam?! After using the Handbook, Taubes then goes on to misstate the writings of Newsholme and Start on the role of alpha-glycerol phosphate and glucose in it.
Have I got a GCBC Reference Check to spin your head coming soon!! I think it's more damning even than this one. Oh ... and I doubt this is the last you'll hear from this book.
Supplement 15: Handbook of Physiology, Adipose Tissue
Structural aspects of adipose tissue: A summary attempting to synthesize the information contained in the preceding chapters
Joseph R. Williamson, Paul E. Lacy
Pages: 201-210
Enzymes involved in carbohydrate metabolism in adipose tissue
G. Weber, H. J. Hird, N. B. Stamm, D. S. Wagle
Pages: 225-237Glyceride biosynthesis, glyceride breakdown and glycogen breakdown in adipose tissue: mechanisms and regulation
Martha Vaughan, Daniel Steinberg
Pages: 239-251Glycogen metabolism in adipose tissue
Eleazar Shafrir, Benyamin Shapiro, Ernst Wertheimer
Pages: 313-318Regulation of fatty acid release with particular reference to pituitary factors
M. S. Raben
Pages: 331-334Release of free fatty acids from adipose tissue in vitro in relation to rates of triglyceride synthesis and degradation
Daniel Steinberg, Martha Vaughan
Pages: 335-347Regulation of fatty acid esterification in adipose tissue incubated in vitro
Bernard Leboeuf
Pages: 385-391Effects of aging on the composition and metabolism of adipose tissue in the rat
Alfred Gellhorn, William Benjamin
Pages: 399-405Comparative physiology of adipose tissue in different sites and in different species
Eleazar Shafrir, Ernst Wertheimer
Pages: 417-429Perfusion of isolated adipose tissue: FFA release and blood flow in rat parametrial fat body
Robert O. Scow
Pages: 437-453Chylomicron metabolism: uptake and metabolism by perfused adipose tissue
Martin Rodbell, Robert O. Scow
Pages: 491-498Metabolism of lipids in chylomicrons and very low-density lipoproteins
Richard J. Havel
Pages: 499-507The adipokinetic property of hypophyseal peptides and catecholamines: a problem in comparative endocrinology
Daniel Rudman, Mario Di Girolamo, Martin F. Malkin, Luis A. Garcia
Pages: 533-539In vivo and in vitro adipokinetic effects of corticotropin and related peptides
Harold E. Lebovitz, Frank L. Engel
Pages: 541-547Autonomic nervous system and adipose tissue
Bernard B. Brodie, Roger P. Maickel, Daniel N. Stern
Pages: 583-600Some physiological and clinical implications of lipid mobilization from adipose tissue
Lars A. Carlson, Jonas Boberg, Birgitta Hõgstedt
Pages: 625-644Lipid composition and metabolism of subcutaneous adipose tissue and lipoma of man
Alfred Gellhorn, William Benjamin
Pages: 661-665Effect of adipose tissue extracts on the insulin activity of human serum
Walter N. Shaw
Pages: 675-680Regulation of adipose tissue metabolism within the intact organism: a summary
George F. Cahill, Albert E. Renold
Pages: 681-684
Comments
http://kindkehealthnotes.blogspot.co.nz/2013/06/what-is-fat-mobilizing-substance.html
Epinephrine etc. might fit, but surely these could be measured in the 1960s?
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=407163806078259&set=a.213965122064796.47381.191018811026094&type=1&theater
No matter how he spins it he's still kinda fat.
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