Demystifying "I can't eat fat"!This team outputs the truth of the "heart"

Author:Scientific network Time:2022.07.15

Text | "China Science News" reporter Li Chenyang Diao Wenyi

It took 2 years, Hu Sumei, a lecturer of Beijing University of Technology and Industry, has been looking for a kind of person in the sea of people, legendary people who "do not eat fat".

"In the long run, as long as I look at it, I can know whether this person meets our standards." Hu Sumei told the China Science Journal. She is a volunteer for a study to find a request. After studying for 6 years, she used to find someone to go to 1/3.

"Usually, our impression of this group of people is to eat whatever they want to eat, and we will not gain weight. Because we think they will consume too much energy intake through high -level physical exercise." Zhang Xueying, a postdoctoral of the hospital, said.

Their mentor, famous physiologist John Roger Speakman participated in an academic exchange in 2007. The speaker said: "Studying obese people will only tell us how to become obese. If we want to become thinner, we should study those who are really thin."

He felt that this was a very interesting idea. Therefore, when he worked in China in 2011, he wrote the plan of "thin" into the application.

Today, 11 years later, the first batch of research results of the Speakman team for the thin group was published in the CELL sub -magazine "Cell -Metabolism" magazine. The conclusions they got from the data subverted people's awareness of this crowd.

Focus on studying obesity and frequently produce "heart -hearted" paper

John Roger Speakman, a foreign academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a foreign academician of the American Academy of Sciences, an academician of the Royal Society of the UK, and an academician of the European Academy of Sciences.

At present, he is the chief scientist of the Energy Metabolism Research Center of the Institute of Medicine of the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology and professor of the School of Pharmacy of Shenzhen University of Science and Technology.

Over the years, Speakman has been committed to research on animal and human energy metabolism. In recent years, his team has continued to output in the field of obesity research, and has published a series of research results of "fire out of fire" and "on the hot search".

A paper published in "Science" on August 13, 2021 states that middle -aged blessings can no longer use the "metabolic rate decline" to wash themselves.

Two weeks later, they posted in "Contemporary Biology" to tell everyone: the more fatter people, the less likely it is to lose weight by exercise!

In just half a month, they inserted two knives in the hearts of fat friends.

So is the research on thin seeds this time still so "heartbroken"?

Rare skinny

Hu Sumei

It is easy to find a thin seed, but it is difficult to find a healthy thin thinner who is less than 18.5 and aged 20-40 years old.

According to the U.S. national survey data, the proportion of super thin people in the United States is about 1.5%-2%, which proves that the crowd itself is rare. And currently lacks relevant data in China, which has also brought difficulties to research.

As the first author of the paper, Hu Sumei was studying an important task in the early days, which is to recruit thinner group volunteers. However, few people meet the experimental requirements.

So that later, Whether walking in the cafeteria, square, subway, classroom ... Hu Sumei was "looking" volunteer anytime, anywhere: "Hello, I think you are thin, can we study you?" "I want to know you Why is it so thin? Do you want to test it? "

What's more challenging is that these volunteers must not only be thin enough, but also healthy.

Researchers first excluded people who were obesity, pregnancy, lactation, and people who became thinner due to various diseases, and further investigated the diet and movement of these people through questionnaires.

In the end, they recruited 150 qualified "healthy thin". Interestingly, among these 150 people, women accounted for 83%. In contrast, women in normal weight (21.5

"What we expected is that the proportion of men and women should not be much different, but I did not expect that this would happen." Hu Sumei said, "We are not very clear for the specific reason, but I think that on the one hand, it may be that women may be more willing to participate in such a study because They are more concerned about their body and diet. On the other hand, women may account for a larger proportion in healthy super thin people. "

In the process of contacting volunteers, Hu Sumei found that most of the super thin people want to be fatter. Many of them complained that they "can eat, but they can't get fat."

But is this really the case?

Imagine the real skinny

After completing the recruitment of volunteers, the researchers launched 8 indicators for them: height and weight, body composition, blood biochemical indicators, endothelial function, lung function, basic metabolic rate, activity, and total energy consumption (dual -standard water consumption (dual -standard water water (dual -standard water water (dual -standard water water (dual -standard water water (dual -standard water water method).

The so -called "dual -standard water method" is to allow volunteers to drink dual -standard water for 14 consecutive days to collect volunteer urine and analyze the changes in the abundance of the bidding for urine to determine the energy consumption of the volunteer's energy consumption Essence This is also the "gold standard" of daily energy consumption under the state of free activity.

After calculation, researchers have found that compared with normal body reorganization, the "Healthy Thin" group is less than 12%less energy intake through diet. This result has excluded the part of the person who deliberately diet to maintain slim.

What is unexpected is that the amount of exercise of these thin men is not high at all, and even 23%lower than ordinary people! In addition, although these people don't eat much and move less, their static metabolic rate is unexpectedly higher than expected.

"This is very different from our original ideas, and it can even be said to be the opposite." Zhang Xueying, another first author of the paper, told the Journal of China Science.

Speakman instructs Zhang Xueying (first from right) to work

Like many people, Zhang Xueying also knew some friends who claimed to be "dead".

Regardless of the intuitive feelings or from scientific assumptions, researchers initially thought that the reason why these people were thin because they usually eat more and consume high, and at the same time control the weight through a lot of exercise.

"Now it seems that even if there are such people, there are very few among the skinny. After all, none of our 150 volunteers are in line with this model." Zhang Xueying said.

At the same time, Zhang Xueying said that the biggest regret of this article is that they only measured the amount of thin people from the perspective of energy, but did not investigate what they eat, nor did they ask their fullness.

"Incorporating these types of information in future research may help us discover more interesting information," she said.

Is thin the "gene lottery"?

In a modern society that is generally "thin as beauty", people often say that people who are naturally easy to lose weight have "won the genes."

This may be true.

Compared to normal weight, these thinner heart health indicators -low -density lipoprotein -cholesterol and blood pressure is very good.

"We often emphasize the benefits of health, but it seems that in terms of maintaining health, a lower body fat rate seems to be more important than the exercise itself." Zhang Xueying said.

All in all, these healthy leanons do not need to control their diet, do not need additional exercise, to maintain a higher basic metabolic rate (may be related to thyroxine levels) and better physiological and biochemical indicators. where are they?

"Our preliminary genetic studies have pointed out that some genes of individual genes exist in single nucleotide polymorphism. We have tried to knock out these genes in mice and find that the corresponding phenotype changes can be caused." To the "China Science News", "In the next research stage, we will pay more attention to the genetic mechanism behind these phenotyins."

Professor Speakman's team group photo