Series: Cold Thermogenesis

Cold Thermogenesis 5: Biologic magnetism

My first encounter with thermoplasticity in human biology I first became aware of this seeming paradox as a neurosurgical resident in my first year of training. We were doing a real "gnarly" brain surgery case. It was a young mother who had a massive basilar tip aneurysm. Back in the mid 90's before endovascular coiling procedures we use today, this was the most risky operation that existed in all of medicine. I spent a month prepping for this case. We had to enlist the cardiovascular surgeons to come in and surgically open the patients chest wide open to stop her heart on purpose temporarily and place her on complete cardiopulmonary bypass to stop all the blood flow to her brain. We had less than 20 minutes to then place a clip across the aneurysm to save her life. To complete this herculean surgical task, we had to fill her entire chest cavity with ice to preserve her heart muscle and cool her core temperature so that we could have 20 minutes to complete the brain surgery. Simultaneously, we would open her skull and split the Sylvian fissure in the brain and approach her basilar artery in the geographic center of her head and attempt to put a clip on it without disturbing any of her surrounding anatomy. The best mental image I can give you for this is the ultimate game of "Operation" you used to play as a kid. You must avoid hitting the sides or the nose lights up!!!! One problem in this case, in this game there was live bullets. This maneuver was deadly if not performed correctly the first time. This is one of the most delicate surgeries one can do on a human. Moreover, even if we were successful with the clip obliteration of the aneurysm, we had to restart her frozen heart, get her off cardio pulmonary bypass without an air embolus and awake. In this case everything went well until the last part and this taught me a lesson I would never forget. She died after the operation was a complete success. Her head was already closed up surgically and dressed, the intraoperative angiogram looked awesome, and we restarted her heart and got her off cardio pulmonary bypass without any evidence of a stroke and then she died suddenly. She received two units of cooled banked blood because our surgical team felt she lost some ability to carry oxygen in her blood because several of the monitors showed she had a low oxygen carrying capacity of her hemoglobin. This concerned us because we were worried about her risk of having a stroke because of low oxygenation due to her loss of blood flow for 20 minutes when she was on full bypass. So we did what any surgeon would do. We gave her blood to restore her oxygen carrying capacity and the oxygen monitors showed her oxygenation had totally returned to normal. We were all happy until I noticed her pupils were fixed and dilated when I was putting on her dressings. She also had blue fingers. And then all of a sudden she got a fatal heart rhythm, and she died right there in my arms. I was devastated. I will never forget talking to her family later that day.

Cold Thermogenesis 4: The Holy Trinity

I just want to thank Sean Croxton for asking me to present at Paleo Summit today. The ideas discussed began with a podcast I did with Jimmy Moore, #474. Before I begin here today, I strongly suggest you listen to the Jimmy Moore podcast I did in May of 2011 as a primer for this blog post. It’s going to be a long one, so open a glass of wine as the sun sets tonight. However, I think you need to hear it all tonight since I have your attention from the Paleo Summit. I have planned for this day for some time. I am humbled to share this with you all. It was hard for me to write. If any of you remember when I first gave my initial thoughts on leptin publicly, it was on a podcast I did with Jimmy Moore in May 2011. I discussed the things that transformed my thinking back then. Most of the time I spent with Jimmy, we talked about leptin. In the beginning of the podcast, I mentioned a person who saw me injure myself as I stood up to give a lecture, and told me she knew precisely why I hurt my knee. At the time, I thought I had a good handle on these modern medicine principles she mentioned so I was a skeptical of her thoughts. She told me when I got home she was going to send me a few papers and a book to read. The book was called “The Monk Who Sold his Ferrari.” She was emphatic that I read the book before the papers. Then, she told me to read six specific papers in the order they were numbered and then reflect on what I had just read.

Cold Thermogenesis 3

Evolutionary strategy is based upon finding an environmental niche and exploiting it. Evolution is based upon change and the natural adaptations to it. Today, we are going to explore how some environmental triggers might open a “biochemical trap door.” Why is circadian biology critical? For evolution to work, a cell first must adapt to its environment. So the first thing any living cell would see in an earth day is a period of day and night. It also has to find food to make energy (ATP). In addition, it has to control its own cellular division. The epic battle for the cell is the circadian cycle has to “yoke” the metabolic cycle to its growth cycle. Most people know that the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), is the circadian pacemaker that monitors this dance between darkness and light and the seasonal cold and hot temperatures in our environment. Evolution apparently agreed with this assessment, because we now know it to be true. What most people do not know is how leptin plays a massive role in regulating it. Research has revealed that leptin can induce expression of a neuropeptide gene called vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP) through the VIP cytokine response element. VIP actually is what sets the circadian pacemaker to light. Leptin yokes metabolism and sleep to the light and dark cycle. When temperature becomes the dominant environmental trigger and not light cycles, leptin induces endothelial nitric oxide synthetase (eNOS), that shuts down the photic effects of VIP on the SCN. This means that leptin forces the SCN not to be able to use light any longer to yoke circadian cycles! Once temperature begins to yoke the circadian rhythms, some very special things happen to our biochemistry that normally does not occur in other environments. These are ancient epigenetic programs that are hardwired into the DNA of every descendant of a eutherian mammal. We are descended from these animals.

By Jack Kruse|February 23rd, 2012|Cancer, Circadian Cycle, Cold Thermogenesis, Colon Cancer, Diabetes, Epi Paleo, Epigenetics, Leaky Gut / Grain Brain, Mitochondria, Optimal Pillar 1, Optimal Pillar 4, Series: Cold Thermogenesis, The Importance of Sleep, The Leptin Prescription, The Optimal Paleo Diet|234 Comments

Cold Thermogensis 2

Now that you understand that I believe cold environments were how life first evolved, what implications does this hold for all life and humans today? I think with this thought experiment we need to begin to talk about another aspect of evolution to fully conceptualize how cold works for biology. Let’s talk about sleep for 4 short minutes. First, I want you to watch this video before you proceed. Recently, one of my readers pointed out he was confused by Dr. Gamble when she said the normal pattern of sleep in a natural environment had two cycles. He wanted to know why her version and my version for sleep as written in my post “Rx for the Leptin Rx” were not congruent. It was a great question that really opens the discussion to the idea of evolutionary mismatches. These mismatches occur in many modern systems of biology, and they are actually increasing in frequency and severity as time elapses. The reason is quite simple. Evolution is constantly getting faster as time goes on, relative to the current state of our genome. This is really how the “cellular theory of relativity” is currently affecting our own genome today. The speed of evolutionary change has far out stripped the ability of our paleolithic genes to catch up. This mismatch causes major problems for modern humans. When they further exacerbate the system with choices not congruent with our biology, the results are magnified in disease incidence and prevalence. She also mentioned in passing, early in her talk, that people who went deep into the ground have been found to be “very productive” while in a cold dark environment. She did not expand on this concept at all, but I would strongly suggest you remember this as the cold thermogenesis series progresses on. There is a deep biologic reason this occurs. As we use this pathway, lots of things improve that we do not expect.

By Jack Kruse|February 22nd, 2012|Alzheimer’s, Circadian Cycle, Cold Thermogenesis, Diabetes, Epi Paleo, Epigenetics, Heart Disease, Inflammation, Leaky Gut / Grain Brain, Optimal Pillar 1, Optimal Pillar 4, Series: Cold Thermogenesis, The Importance of Sleep, The Leptin Prescription, The Optimal Paleo Diet|Comments Off

Cold Thermogenesis 1: Theory To Practice Begins

Today, we are going to bend your mind a bit by explaining to you many of the things you might be believe as biologic truths published in biochemistry books today are in fact truths, when certain environmental truths are held within a constant range. Yet, they change tremendously when certain factors are altered. Often the biophysical changes do not even have to affect the thermal coefficients of the biochemistry in the hypothalamus. Just the perception of the environmental change from the brain is enough to alter the chemistry as is the enzyme and proteins existed on the top of Mount Everest or on the ocean floor in the coldest environments on earth. When biochemistry was observed in living cells and described, the scientists rarely considered these effects on our biochemistry and how it may alter the cellular terror. Our hypothalamus rewires too many stimuli, and it appears that temperature is a major factor in the rewiring protocol of our brain. Evolution has clearly needed to use this in the past for some reason. Our job as enquiring primal bio-hackers, is to figure out why and how this might have happened. In essence, they looked at the complex biologic machinery from a standard Newtonian platform. Most scientists know that Newtonian physics explain much of what we observe in the physical sciences here on earth, and that quantum mechanics best describes the physics of subatomic matter of matter in space on a universal scale. When QM theory is adapted to many biologic systems, some puzzling things emerge that are hard to explain. Complicating matters, we have few ways to measure the quantum effects within biologic systems to test how they may affect living cells. This does not imply in any way that quantum mechanics does not apply to biologic systems, because it clearly does. It is often buried in the biochemistry equations that biochemists use to describe how living cells make order from the complete chaos that rules matter. This implies the effects might be difficult to discern or measure with current techniques we have, and this is why we have yet to uncover them in biologic systems. The brain clearly uses quantum mechanics to operate. This is not a controversial point at all in the scientific world.

By Jack Kruse|February 21st, 2012|Cold Thermogenesis, Epigenetics, Optimal Pillar 2, Optimal Pillar 4, Series: Cold Thermogenesis, The Importance of Sleep|68 Comments

The Cold Thermogenesis Protocol

The Cold Thermogenesis Protocol should be added gradually to the Leptin Rx rest protocol. This blog post is additive to the Leptin Rx, and is an evolution extension of it for those who need it. I hope you all realize that not everyone will need it. Some will need it because they have special needs that they face. This blog is designed for those who have been previously left out of the reset protocol. Those people are gastric bypass patients, HCG users, those on exogenous steroids, chronic pain patients, and those with T2D and metabolic syndrome, as a few examples. Prolonged and controlled local peripheral skin cooling can induce selective “damage,” and increased hypothalamic signaling by forcing adipocyte apoptosis and subsequent loss of subcutaneous fat without damaging the overlying skin or the underlying muscle layers. This means that acute cold cause rapid leptin sensitivity! It means that fat is forced to liberate leptin from fat cells to slowly lower its serum levels as long as the cold stimulus is applied safely. This is new scientific information that was first carried out in pigs in 2008, and subsequently tested in humans and found to be quite effective for fat removal in certain selected areas of the body.