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Obesity Prevention: People With Inflexible Metabolisms Burn Less Fat At Night

Obesity Prevention: People With Inflexible Metabolisms Burn Less Fat At Night
Preventing obesity and diabetes is much more preferable to treating them © Shutterstock

If your body burns more carbohydrates than fat during sleep, you may be more likely to gain weight or become obese. Inflexible metabolisms may be a risk factor for obesity, suggests a new study.

Written by Longjam Dineshwori |Updated : September 17, 2021 7:03 PM IST

Our body needs energy to do everything from breathing, eating and sleeping to moving around. Metabolism is the process by which our body breaks down the carbohydrates, fats (lipids) and proteins in food to make energy. Immediately after eating, carbohydrates are the main source of our energy. But after fasting, we get most of our energy from fats. Metabolic flexibility refers to the body's ability to switch metabolic energy sources in response to changes in nutritional state, such as after meals and during sleep. Studies have shown that disrupted metabolic flexibility is associated with diseases such as obesity and diabetes. Now, another study has suggested that people with inflexible metabolisms burn less fat at night than those with flexible metabolism.

The authors hope that their findings can help identify people at risk for developing metabolic diseases, like obesity and diabetes.

Yearly screening may help prevent obesity and diabetes

Researchers at the University of Tsukuba led by Professor Kumpei Tokuyama used the respiratory quotient, abbreviated as RQ, to study how metabolism changes during sleep and whether differs in people with inflexible metabolisms.

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RQ is the measurement of how much oxygen we use and how much carbon dioxide we breathe out. When the carbon dioxide/oxygen ratio is equal to 1, it signals that the energy source is carbohydrates, but lower than one, around 0.8, indicates that fats or proteins are being used as the energy source. For the study, the researchers measured the carbon dioxide/oxygen ratios from 127 people, every 5 minutes over a 24-hour period.

As sleep is like a period of fasting, the researchers had expected that RQs would decrease all night long, and fat burning would increase as sleep progressed. Surprisingly, they found a different pattern. They found that while RQ values decreased steadily at the beginning of sleep, after reaching a low point, the numbers picked up after midnight and continued to increase until people woke up. Particularly, the RQs at night were found to be higher for participants with less flexible metabolisms, indicating that they were burning more carbohydrates than fat.

"Yearly checkups that focus on measuring sleeping RQ values could help screen for people at risk for developing metabolic diseases, thus allowing timely interventions," said Professor Tokuyama, as quoted by ScienceDaily.

Preventing obesity and diabetes is much more preferable to treating them, he added.

People are more likely to become obese at this age

Earlier a UK study published online September 2 in The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology showed that young adults aged 18-24 years are at the highest risk of weight gain and becoming overweight or obesity over the next 10 years compared with all other adults. In addition, the researchers said that age plays a bigger role in obesity than socioeconomic status and ethnicity factors that more traditionally associated with obesity.

For the study, the researchers looked at the health records for more than two million adults in England. They found that individuals aged 18-24 years were four times more likely to become overweight or to develop obesity than those aged 65 to 74.

Thus, the authors suggested that young adults should be a target for obesity prevention policies.