In 2012, when scientists claimed they found an exercise-stimulated hormone that increased fat burning in the body, couch potatoes could hope that a synthetic form of the hormone might be able to mimic exercise’s benefits.
Duke researchers have zeroed in on this slimming hormone … and they’ve found that it doesn’t really exist.
At least, not in humans.
The good news is, it’s not as hard as you think to get your body to drop extra fat and get lean.
You see, the so-called “exercise-hormone,” known as irisin, was supposed to migrate from exercising muscles into body fat and tell fat cells to begin burning off calories instead of creating more fat.
The alleged existence of irisin, its name derived from Iris, the name of a messenger goddess in Greek mythology, raised hope that an irisin pill could help people lose weight and shrink the risk of diabetes.
But a collaborative study of Duke and German researchers demonstrates that the antibodies scientists used in their lab tests to analyze blood for irisin are inaccurate and mistakenly had tagged other proteins as irisin.
“From the start, the study of irisin has been complicated by unvalidated reagents and contradictory data that have raised flags about the existence of irisin and its role in humans and other species,” says researcher Harold P. Erickson, who teaches cell biology and biochemistry at Duke University School of Medicine. “We provide compelling evidence that the signals reported by previous studies were due to non-specific blood proteins, not irisin. Hopefully, our findings will finally convince other researchers to stop chasing a myth.”
Unfortunatley, drug manufacturers will keep chasing the myth. But you don’t have to wait for a magic pill. There is a way to tell your body to burn off fat instead of storing it.
All you have to do is eat more protein.
One of the reasons the Paleo Diet works so well for dropping excess fat is that it resets the metabolism from starvation mode to “the hunting is good.”
Our bodies currently store fat like crazy because the human metabolism didn’t evolve to recognize the grain-based foods that make up most of our food choices from the big manufacturers as food. Grains are something our Paleo ancestors would only eat if they were starving. So our bodies think we’re starving when we eat it… and pack on fat as a survival mechanism.
But if you eat protein instead, your body gets the message that everything’s ok. No starvation in sight. Your body will automatically start dumping the fat because it’s not needed.
How much protein should you eat? Mainstream medicine says 50 grams a day is right. But that’s not nearly enough to reverse years of their misguided advice to eat heaps of bread and grains.
Integrative doctors like Dr. Eliaz and Dr. Cutler will tell you to try and eat one gram of protein for every pound of lean body mass you have. You can have your body composition measured and any doctor’s office or even health club.
A 180 pound man who’s a bit overweight with 20% body fat can reverse that by eating 144 grams of protein or more a day. If that sounds like a lot of food, don’t worry, it’s not. There are 65 grams of protein in just three ounces of beef.
