Where is the fat

Where does the fat go when a person loses weight? Such a question is Ruben Mirman and Andry Brown, who outlined their results in the article in the Christmas issue of British Medical Journal , set 50 family doctors (a very approximate analogue of our therapist), 50 nutritionists and 50 fitness coaches.

The answers struck the authors - more than half of the respondents in all groups replied that fat turns into energy (heat). Such a result seems completely fantastic on the one hand, and on the other, demonstrating unconditional surrender of school education before the stereotypes of mass consciousness. The authors suspect that the idea of ​​turning fat into energy arises under the influence of all sorts of dietary slogans like "to lose weight, you need to spend more energy than consume."

One way or another, half of the respondents renounced the law of conservation of mass , in our culture attributed to Lomonosov (and sometimes Lavoisier). Perhaps all these people heard something about Einstein, the equivalence of mass and energy and somewhere saw the formula E = mc2. Indeed, in some situations, the mass can turn into energy. For example, with annihilation of a pair, a particle-antiparticle, the whole mass of two particles turns into the energy of the resulting photons. A noticeable amount of mass turns into energy during nuclear and thermonuclear reactions. When the nucleus of the uranium atom encounters a slow neuron and is divided, about 1% of the mass of the uranium atom turns into energy. In chemical reactions, a very small part of the mass is converted into energy: for example, in the burning reaction of methane

CH4 + 202 → CO2 + 2H20

35.6 megazhoule is released per cubic meter of gas, which approximately corresponds to 0.00000001% of the mass.

If you imagine a person who has lost a 10 kg, and substitute in the formula E = mc2 these same 10 kg and the speed of light - 3x108 m/c, then the released energy will be obtained in about 1 exajul (1018). For comparison, there is a TNT equivalent (energy released during an explosion of 1 ton of trinitrotoluene) - 4 GIGIGAZHULA (109). In short, if every losing weight turned his mass into energy, even shreds could not have flown through the back streets due to the lack of capes.

The rest of the answer to the question, although they remained for the most part incorrect, were more believable: the fat left the owner’s body with excrement, urine or later or even turned into muscles. Probably, modern technologies of cellular reprogramming are able to turn adipocyte (adipose tissue) into a myocite (muscle tissue cell) in laboratory conditions, but such a process cannot go massively in the body. And misconception arises due to the fact that with intense and persistent exercises, adipocytes leave drops of fat, and the muscles, on the contrary, grow.

The correct answer, which took the last place, is such a large part of the burned fat leaves the body through the lungs in the form of carbon dioxide. Smaller - in the form of water (through the lungs, with later, urine, etc.).

Excess hydrocarbons stock up in the body in the form of fats ( triglycerides ). Triglycerides are glycerol esters and three fatty acids. In the human body, it is usually oleic acid, palmitic and linoleic. The stoichiometric formula for the average triglyceride in the human body then turns out approximately C55H104O6. When burning fat, oxidation occurs, an oxygen reaction. The same thing with small amendments occurs when the firewood, paper, and in general, about any organic compounds. In the case of firewood, high temperature is needed so that oxygen begins to respond with wood molecules. In a living cell, you cannot bring a match to the molecule, so special proteins are catalyzing oxidation, but the principle is the same. Just as firewood will not burn without oxygen, a living cell, devoid of oxygen loses the ability to generate energy and dies.

In chemical ties between atoms in a polymer molecule, energy is stored. Energy is released, and all atoms become connected not with each other, but with oxygen. Perhaps it is from here that the misconception that fat turns into energy. But in fact, the need for energy is the cause and trigger of the splitting of fats, but energy is not the only product of splitting, and it does not at all determine the decline in mass. Just when the body has a need for energy, enzymes begin to synthesize, fats change their location and oxidize, but the mass leaves the body with carbon dioxide and water. In general, the reaction of the splitting of the fat molecule can be recorded as follows:

C55H104O6 + 78O2 → 55CO2 + 52H2O + Energy

If you count all this for 10 kg of fat, it turns out that a person should breathe 29 kg of oxygen for its splitting, exhale 28 kg of carbon dioxide and in some other ways to get rid of 11 liters of water.

The authors of the article said that they were often asked if it was possible to lose weight if they breathe stronger. They warned readers against such attempts, because they do not lead to anything other than hyperventilation, characterized by dizziness, rapid heartbeat, and sometimes fainting. In addition, they reassured the public, assuring universal weight loss cannot lead to an increase in the pace of global warming, since it does not violate the natural cycle CO2 in nature. According to them, global warming is only leaded by the introduction of a new carbon into the cycle, still recorded in the bowels of the Earth.

In addition, the results of the survey show some imperfection of the school education system. This is also indicated by the authors themselves, they recommend making additions to the school curriculum. It seems to me that if the respondents were asked to draw the formula for triglyceride or fatty acid, many participants in the experiment would have fully coped with this task. Problems arise when moving from privileges to the general picture and the need to attract considerations from neighboring sciences (the law of preservation from physics and ideas about the simplest chemical reactions of the level of inorganic chemistry).