Shrinking Fat Cells: Energy vs. Insulin - Dr. Ben Bikman

Dr. Benjamin Bikman earned his Ph.D. in Bioenergetics and was a postdoctoral fellow with the Duke-National University of Singapore in metabolic disorders. He is currently a professor of pathophysiology and a biomedical scientist at Brigham Young University in Utah.

Dr. Bikman's professional focus as a scientist and professor is to better understand chronic modern-day diseases, with a special emphasis on the origins and consequences of obesity and diabetes, with an increasing scrutiny of the pathogenicity of insulin and insulin resistance. He frequently publishes his research in peer-reviewed journals and presents at international science meetings.

Dr. Bikman has long been an advocate of a ketogenic diet in light of the considerable evidence supporting its use as a therapy for reversing insulin resistance. His website InsulinIQ.com promotes dietary clarity, healing, and freedom through evidence-based science about insulin resistance. Employing cell-autonomous to whole-body systems, Dr. Bikman's recent efforts have focused on exploring the intimate associations between the metabolic and immune systems.

Low Carb Down Under

5 comments

Personal Fat Threshold and Genetic/Ethnic Variation: Each individual has a personal fat threshold determined by their ability to create new fat cells (hyperplasia). Once this threshold is surpassed, hypertrophy and insulin resistance ensue. Ethnic differences, such as the smaller, more numerous fat cells in Caucasians versus fewer, larger fat cells in South Asians, explain why some populations develop diabetes and metabolic disease at lower BMI. This insight demands personalized approaches to obesity and metabolic disease risk.
A long-held view that I had was that metabolic health in Japan was better than other parts of the world on a Standard American Diet, but after listening to this lecture I've been forced to reconsider this view entirely, because it's entirely possible to be pre-diabetic and in very poor metabolic health without looking obese at all. I was the same way: although I merely looked "chubby" I had NAFLD. I'm really glad I decided to do something about it...
- although I merely looked "chubby" I had NAFLD. I'm really glad I decided to do something about it...
  I'm glad too! I hope the NAFLD has resolved
  The TOFI aspect of metabolic health isn't widely understood yet. Not all unhealthy people are visibility fat! In fact, most are not fat at all.
Insulin is the hormone of the fed state - Dr. Cahill
Metabolic rate goes DOWN when insulin goes up! So every glucose rich meal decreases metabolic rate. So even the people who don't think the carbohydrate insulin model of obesity is correct - from their very primitive CICO perspective insulin REDUCES the Calories Out part of the equation.
All calorie restricting diets are lower insulin diets, huge unacknowledged confounding variable in the published literature.
This was a really amazing lecture, I highly recommend you watch it. Yes you! The person who is reading this but is incredulous - watch it.
- This factor alone must confound so many studies that try to reduce "caloric intake" with regards to some health outcome. Makes sense that the other way around would be better! Try to overfeed the subjects and see what happens. I hope more studies are done that way, but it looks like the subjects become very uncomfortable over the course of the study haha
  Thank you for sharing this very educational video.
  
  Most people think of a ketogenic metabolism as a very specific food, or strict lifestyle, very rare. But it's just a fancy phrase for burning fat, which we do all the time. Sleeping, skipping a meal, any time we lose weight we are in a fat burning ketogenic metabolism.
  If I could make people understand one thing is that keto is common, your doing it all the time, any time people want to lose weight they are wanting to do keto. Those CICO people are advocating for keto, they just don't realize it.