I know metabolism can be increased, or at least maintained by weight/ resistance training, proper sleep/diet etc..
But why can’t we just medically increase someone’s metabolism by say 30% (temporarily)?
In: Biology
We can, it’s called an ECA stack, ephedrine, caffeine and aspirin
Not exactly healthy tho
You can. It’s called exercising.
Other options include stimulants like caffeine, ephedrine. But most of these will only increase your TDEE by like 5-10%. 30% is a lot. There is a drug called DNP, but it’s very dangerous and can kill you pretty easily. People tried using it under medical supervision for weight loss, but it was too dangerous.
Your body is a constant chemical balancing act. For example, lithium. An absolutely required compound for healthy brain chemistry, a change as small as a few micrograms in the brain can cause seizures and comas, or mania and insomnia.
If we were to medically increase someone’s metabolism, it would basically be like running a car too fast on the highway. Yes, you’re getting better performance by pushing your car harder, but all of the parts wear out faster, and it’s generally more dangerous.
Changing your metabolism slowly allows the rest of your body to adapt to those changes, whereas a sudden spike in metabolism can do really bad things to the body.
Homeostasis involves an absolute tonne of different unique chemical reactions, in order to just increase metabolism outright whilst remaining healthy you’d have to increase the rate of every single one by the perfect amount, which won’t be the same for every reaction.
Thermoregulation would then have to increase accordingly. Organs would have to operate faster, which may not be good for them if they’re not strong enough. Your intake of everything would have to increase as well as your expulsion. Cell division would likely have to increase too to account for more dying as a result of the increased metabolism. The increased energy output has to go somewhere so you’d likely shake if not moving, or overheat.
You’d essentially be overclocking your entire body.
Getting all this right with a drug? Not easy, if not impossible.
Your thyroid regulates your metabolism. If you increase your metabolism, even for a short while, it could cause permanent damage to your thyroid. It’d be like driving your car at 7500 rpm. Eventually it’ll blow your engine.
It can be, there are several drugs that do that. The problem is, most of the energy we burn is for keeping us warm, so you cannot increase the amount you burn without also causing overheating. This is also why it is said that exercise is only effective when you’re sweating, as you would burn the energy anyway to stay warm.
You can but they’re not particularly good for you. I recall in there was a pretty effective drug called fen-phen which increased metabolism and suppressed appetite but ended up getting pulled off the market because it was giving people in their 30’s heart issues.
Technically any stimulant will increase your metabolism somewhat, most diet pills are just caffeine which does work but probably not to the extent you would want. One of the main issues is that your body adapts to any drugs; if you’re longtime coffee drinker then you’ve probably noticed the effects firsthand. Take a drug that block receptors and your body will ‘upregulate’ new receptors; take a drug that activates receptors and your body will ‘downregulate’ those. So even if you find a drug that doubles your metabolism on the first day; after a few years, you would have a much slower metabolism without the drug.
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