META
I apologize for the delay in posting this (it should have come before
Jack's recent reply to the same message). I had composed it almost
immediately, but did not post it due to my self-imposed 7 day wait
restriction. However, the original never did arrive in my inbox from
Yahoo, so my system of tagging posts that I plan to answer could not
work for it, and because of my preoccupation with other intensive work
it then got totally forgotten. However, there is some benefit
afterall, since I have new input to it that makes it even better than
it would have been if posted immediately.
/META

--- In morelife@yahoogroups.com, Ólafur Páll Ólafsson <olafurpall@...>
wrote:
>
> --- In morelife@yahoogroups.com, Paul Wakfer <paul@> wrote:
> >
> > This is my response to the second part of the original for which the
> > subject title is still appropriate.
> >
> > On 01/07/2009 11:30 PM, David Thomas Jackemeyer wrote:

[big snip of text not in need of response or responded to elsewhere]

> > > If this is viable, are these concerns mitigated if exercise instead
> > > immediately precedes the 2hr large meal?
> >
> > That would be an even better time for it. The more deeply fasted state,
> > the better effect of the exercise on promotion of autophagy. And 2 hrs
> > should give your body sufficient time to recover before the large meal.
>
> Since he wrote "immediately precedes" I think Jack was speaking of
> exercising immediately prior to eating the meal not 2 hrs before
> eating it as you appear to have understood it.

Indeed you are correct, and Jack's sentence was clearly written to
signify that. I was not in top form when I read/responded and, partly
for that reason, Kitty was not totally focused either.

[Neither one of us can remember what Paul was referring to here at the
time that he originally wrote this reply (almost two months ago now).
However, it had nothing to do with his mysterious leg syndrome that
began it's infrequent, though initially quite severe in symptoms,
appearance back in March 2000. It has now been over *14 months* since
the last episode - the one before which he was seen by a local
infectious disease specialist, had some blood tests during and the
resulting bill was subject of a Focus on Freedom article -
http://selfsip.org/focus/healthcareexample.html Because of this
usually lengthy hiatus and because the last episode was not at all
like previous ones, we have great hopes and some conviction that the
cause of that ailment has been eliminated (whatever it was). **Kitty]

> Anyways your point
> still stands, that the more deeply fasted state, the better effect of
> the exercise on promotion of autophagy.
>
> BTW in case anyone is wondering which is better I think it would be
> better to exercise immediately prior to eating the single meal rather
> than 2 hours before eating it (I know Jack didn't ask this question
> but I'm on a roll here:-). There a few reasons I think this is the case:
>
> 1) If you exercise immediately prior to eating there will be longer
> since you last ate when you exercise compared to if you exercise an
> hour or two before eating. Not having eaten for so long will increase
> the demand for autophagy to provide the energy required for the
> exercise, not to mention that autophagy will already have been
> increased considerably if it is so long since you last ate. Exercising
> at this time should strongly induce autophagy.
> 2) As I mentioned above exercise increases insulin sensitivity in the
> muscle tissue being exercised. The action of contracting your muscles
> causes translocation of GLUT-4 to the cell surface of the skeletal
> muscle cells. GLUT-4 is the main glucose transporter in human muscle
> tissue. This consequently leads to increased uptake of glucose into
> the exercised muscle tissue. This will in turn cause more of any
> ingested glucose to be taken up by muscle tissue rather than
> contributing to harmful elevation of blood glucose levels. And this is
> an effect that is generally strongest right after exercising.
> 3) During exercise blood flow to the muscle tissue being exercised is
> increased considerably. This fades quickly when the exercise is
> stopped but lasts for a while after the exercise. This contributes to
> increased nutrient delivery to the muscle tissue during and right
> after the exercise. The effect again is that more of any ingested
> nutrients will be taken up by the muscle tissue. The benefits of this
> include a lower blood glucose spike from a meal that is eaten after
> exercising compared to if it were eaten later. Also since the
> increased blood flow to the working muscle fades fairly quickly after
> the exercise it is important to eat right after the exercise if one
> wants to take advantage of the increased nutrient delivery and the
> potential benefits it has.
>
> BTW to take advantage of some of the benefits I mentioned above I
> myself try to always eat my biggest meal of the day right after
> exercising. I also partition a large share of my daily carbohydrate
> intake during this meal knowing it will likely cause less of a rise in
> my blood sugar than if I were to consume them at other times.

Your reasoning is correct as far as it goes, but, since it only
examines the consequences of eating immediately after exercise on the
blood sugar and the muscles, I do not think that it is complete. The
reason that I wrote above: "2 hrs should give your body sufficient
time to recover before the large meal" is that, although I have no
cites for evidence, it seems very clear to me that if the body is
still heated up, heart racing, with high blood pressure and entirely
focused on using some of its muscles, it will not be in optimum
condition to either consume or digest food.

Remember that the digestive system is not passive but is rather a
large organ that requires a lot of energy to adequately do its job.
This is why many people feel tired after a large meal and take a nap.
All animals do the same thing. (Think of lions gorging themselves and
then sleeping after a kill - this is not due to the weight of the food
on them, since the same lion is capable of dragging the entire carcass
for hundreds of yards to a sheltered and relaxed feeding place). Just
as animals need a safe place during sleep, so those that eat large
amounts at once, and are not the top local predators, need a safe
place in which to eat. Humans are no different. This is particularly
the case when one has not eaten for some time and has also been
exercising during that period. Just today this phenomenon showed
itself strongly to me. Yesterday was a fasting day, but it was also a
desert music/dance event. We got there by 5pm did our usual hiking and
desert trash cleanup and then began dancing, which was extremely
intensive to excellent music between 11pm to 1am (and the desert
ground is *not* easy to dance on). We had nothing but our tea drink
during the entire time until 1pm today (after stopping any food intake
at 10pm 2 days before that). After eating most of the first half of
the meal today - smoothie plus a large veggie cheese omelet, I felt so
tired that I could not finish the salad portion and actually laid down
for about 20 mins in the dark and quiet. My analysis of this situation
is that because of its highly depleted state (and I had taken acipimox
right after rising late, only 2 hours before eating), my body was not
able to supply the digestive system with enough energy to digest the
food and at the same time to still keep me alert and fully functional.
At 2.5 hours after finishing that food I am up and able to this work.

[I did not experience the same degree of fatigue as Paul this
afternoon. I did dance last night for almost as long a period - my
pedometer recorded 32,209 steps for the day while his was at 40,336 -
though the intensity was not quite as great as what I would have done
to the great music output by Spyder (11pm-1am slot) if the surface had
been smooth. (I stopped for short periods to snap photos and also to
converse with some friends and curious new people ... :)

I've not been taking any acipimox the past 2 weeks because it appears
to be linked to a return of diarrhea; I'm just now back to full
reinstitution of all my other supplements and will see how that goes
before any retry of the acipimox. While I did feel a noticeable
decrease of energy in the mid-afternoon today that I do not experience
on fasting days, it was not so great that I stopped my writing (of a
lengthy online comment) to go lie down. **Kitty]

Therefore, there must be some minimal time after exercise, probably
depending no the length and intensity of the exercise, and perhaps on
the condition of the individual, which is needed to rest and recover
the body *before* the consumption and digestive processing of food can
optimally occur. I do not expect that this time is as long as 2 hrs
(unless perhaps a person had exercised to total exhaustion), but I
would expect that it would always be at least 15 mins and could well
be longer.

Therefore, my general recommendation would be to act as Olafur stated
(and for the reasons that he gave/explained), but to be sure to wait a
sufficient amount of time after exercising so that your physiological
state fully recovers to basal levels. For most people this should be
automatic with the normal amount of time taken for a shower, a change
of clothes and readying the food for consumption.

Another important point is that although Olafur's recommendation (with
my moderation of it) is good theory, I know of no studies that show
that such an approach is conducive to either increased health or
longevity. And, as a general rule of biology - particularly human
biology, it is so complex that more often than not good theories do
not stand the test of experiment.

--Paul

[In conjunction with Paul's comments above about digestive processing,
I went to his copy of Guyton's Textbook of Medical Physiology (8th
ed.) to see what information could be discerned about the
gastrointestinal tract's requirements for its task of transporting,
mixing, digesting and absorbing nutrients (from) the food one
consumes. The subject is far too great for me to absorb in a short
time the information on all that the GI tract does. But as a brief
indicator of the amount of work being done in this part of the body,
I'll just quote from the subsection "Gastrointestinal Blood Flow" (Ch
62 Principles of Gastrointestinal Function - Motility, Nervous Control
and Blood Circulation):
"Under normal conditions the blood flow in each area of the
gastrointestinal tract, as well as in each layer of the gut wall, is
directly related to the level of local activity. For instance, during
active absorption, blood flow in the villi and adjacent regions of the
submucosa is greatly increased. Likewise, blood flow in the muscle
layers of the intestinal wall increases with increased motor activity
in the gut. For instance, after a meal the motor activity, secretory
activity, and absorptive activity all increase, and likewise the blood
flow increases as much as 100 to 150 percent, usually lasting for 3 to
6 hours."

This textbook is probably the best one on human physiology. For those
who take their life-extension practices very seriously and therefore
want to really understand what is happening in their bodies, this book
should always be readily available for consultation. I see from
looking at Amazon that for the newest edition (11th - 2005) under Book
Description:
"Offers access to the full text and other valuable features online via
the STUDENT CONSULT website" This makes the book even more valuable
in the way of accessibility and usability. **Kitty]