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UniverseHackeryesterday at 3:54 PM1 replyview on HN

The paper you posted is just a review on autophagy and cancer that doesn’t contradict anything I stated. It is a mistake to conflate autophagy, calorie restriction, and cold exposure as necessarily biologically identical, which your comment seems to imply.

I was only raising questions this research and discussion made me curious about, not making any concrete claims.

Although the idea of calorie restriction as a cancer treatment is something still actively debated and researched, I personally doubt it is very useful, or likely to be the main mechanism here in the connection between beige fat and cancer, but it is a possibility to at least be ruled out experimentally in the context of the comment I replied to, which is why I mentioned it anyways. One major concern with calorie restriction in humans but not rodents is that it shuts down your metabolism by limiting t3 thyroid hormone production whereas cold exposure ramps up metabolism by uncoupling mitochondria to produce heat. You are correct that the body can shut down processes and systems that might be important for fighting cancer, in response to calorie restriction.

I am a researcher that studies metabolism, and actually think the prominent focus on fasting and calorie restriction as a potential medical cure-all has been mostly a dead end, that people were mistakenly led down largely as a result of these fundamental differences between rodent and human metabolism.


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bratwurst3000yesterday at 4:24 PM

you are right now I better understand what you meant.

That was the part that confused me.

"If it does negate the benefit than that would suggest that the entire benefit from the beige fat is from putting the body in a calorie deficit, and you would then expect the exact same effectiveness from calorie restriction"

As far as I understood the paper its beige fat that can eat away food from cancer and not white fat. And afaik calorie restriction doesnt augment beige fat. My error was thinking you meant calorie restriction while having white fat but you meant with beige fat? And yes this makes sense.

And I thinked autophagy because this is the main "thing" happenkng while fasting which is not burning body fuel

thanks for the answer

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