FGF21
Episodes
In this clip, Dr. Rhonda Patrick discusses alcohol's impact on recovery, exercise benefits, and how exercise may reduce alcohol cravings.
When people exercise as part of a treatment for alcohol abuse disorder it reduces their volume of alcohol consumption. But why? One reason may be FGF21.
Dr. George Church discusses revolutionary technologies in the field of genetic engineering.
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In this clip, Dr. Rhonda Patrick discusses alcohol's impact on recovery, exercise benefits, and how exercise may reduce alcohol cravings.
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When people exercise as part of a treatment for alcohol abuse disorder it reduces their volume of alcohol consumption. But why? One reason may be FGF21.
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Dr. George Church discusses revolutionary technologies in the field of genetic engineering.
Topic Pages
News & Publications
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Genetic differences drive the preference for sweet foods. www.sciencedaily.com
Whether a person prefers sweets over savory foods is related to their genetic makeup, a 2017 study found. These genetic differences may also drive alcohol consumption and tobacco use, the research showed.
Researchers analyzed the genetic makeup of more than 6,500 people to determine if they carried a particular gene variant of FGF21 – a hormone produced in the liver – called rs838133. Then they asked the participants about their sweet preferences, alcohol consumption, and tobacco use.
They found that participants who had the rs838133 variant were nearly 20 percent more likely to eat more sweet-tasting foods compared to the other participants. Those who had the rs838133 variant were also more likely to consume alcohol or smoke tobacco.
Next, the researchers asked 86 lean, healthy people about their sweet preferences and then, after a 12-hour fast, measured their FGF21 levels. They found that FGF21 levels in participants who had a low preference for sweets were 51 percent higher compared to those who had a high preference for sweets.
These findings suggest that FGF21 influences eating behaviors, curbing the appetite for sweets in some people. Other research suggests that FGF21 also moderates alcohol consumption, but it does it via different pathways. Taken together, these findings suggest that FGF21 release serves as a means to protect the liver from damage. Learn how exercise promotes the release of FGF21, thereby reducing cravings for alcohol.
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Divergent effects of resistance and endurance exercise on plasma bile acids, FGF19, and FGF21 in humans pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Endurance and resistance training are associated with distinct hormonal signatures Exercise is widely accepted to be beneficial to our health. Research finds it to have a positive dose-dependent impact on factors varying from cognitive function and bone strength to all-cause mortality and metabolic health. But does the specific mode of exercise make a difference? A 2018 study suggests that resistance and endurance exercise engage largely distinct hormonal responses in the body. It also highlights endurance training as a particularly useful tool for engaging biochemical signals that can help combat substance addiction.
To compare resistance and endurance training, researchers recruited ten healthy young men (average age 24 years) to participate in a cross-over study. This meant that each participant engaged in both forms of exercise, with half randomly selected to first perform a one-hour endurance training session before “crossing over” to one resistance training session after a 6-to-12-day rest period. The other half of the participants followed the reverse order.
Training sessions were individually tailored to ensure equivalent levels of physiological stress across participants. For instance, resistance training sessions required participants to complete five sets of 10 reps for each exercise, at resistance levels corresponding to 90 percent of their 10 rep maximum capacity. The endurance training sessions were designed to make participants work at 70% of their VO2max(i.e. maximum oxygen uptake capacity). Importantly, participants exercised 10 hours after receiving controlled meals to prevent nutritional factors from interfering with hormone levels in their blood, which was drawn immediately before and at several timepoints after exercise.
The experiment revealed some surprising insights into the hormonal pathways engaged by the two forms of exercise. Shortly after resistance training, participants had lower plasma levels of fibroblast growth factor 19 (FGF19) – a protein secreted by the small intestine and implicated fighting metabolic disease by stimulating the formation of metabolically active brown fatty tissue and increasing sensitivity to the satiety hormone leptin. The drop in FGF19 shortly after resistance exercise is somewhat counterintuitive given robust links between strength training and metabolic health. It raises questions about a potential long-term rebound increase following recovery, which our team looks forward to seeing explored in future studies.
Endurance exercise engaged a distinct biochemical pathway. It caused a near-triple increase in the pancreatic hormone glucagon, which stimulates the release of glucose and fatty acids into the blood. This glucagon spike was followed by an increase in plasma fibroblast growth factor 21 (FGF21) – a metabolic regulator implicated in processes ranging from fatty acid oxidation and ketone body production to the regulation of appetite for addictive substances like alcohol. The findings suggest that endurance and resistance training are associated with distinct hormonal and metabolic benefits, and that endurance exercise in particular may be a helpful strategy in combating addiction.
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Cardio exercise increases the production of FGF21 3x more than strength training: a hormone with relevance to metabolic disorders www.sciencedaily.com
From the article:
In a new study published in the scientific Journal of Clinical Investigation – Insight, the researchers show that cardio training on an exercise bike causes three times as large an increase in the production of the hormone FGF21 than strength training with weights. FGF21 has a lot of positive effects on metabolism.
[…]
Endurance training on a bicycle has such a marked effect on the metabolic hormone that we know ought to take a closer look at whether this regulation of FGF21 is directly related to the health-improving effects of cardio exercise. FGF21’s potential as a drug against diabetes, obesity and similar metabolic disorders is currently being tested, so the fact that we are able to increase the production ourselves through training is interesting', Christoffer Clemmensen elaborates.
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From linked article:
The researchers gave the monkeys a two-bottle choice between water and ethanol, and administered one group an analog of FGF21 to see what effect it had. Sure enough, the test monkeys drank 50 percent less alcohol than the control group. Similar tests in mice also saw a 50-percent reduction in alcohol consumption after being given either human FGF21 or an analog. Interestingly though, the mice and monkeys still chose the ethanol just as often as before, but they drank far less each time.
Fibroblast growth factor 21 happens to be modulated by aerobic exercise:
In a new study published in the scientific Journal of Clinical Investigation – Insight, the researchers show that cardio training on an exercise bike causes three times as large an increase in the production of the hormone FGF21 than strength training with weights. FGF21 has a lot of positive effects on metabolism.