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Starvation response in animals (including humans) is a set of adaptive biochemical and physiological changes, triggered by lack of food or extreme weight loss, in which the body seeks to conserve energy by reducing metabolic rate and/or non-resting energy expenditure to prolong survival and preserve body fat and lean mass.
Thermogenesis is the process of heat production in organisms. It occurs in all warm-blooded animals, and also in a few species of thermogenic plants such as the Eastern skunk cabbage , the Voodoo lily ( Sauromatum venosum ), and the giant water lilies of the genus Victoria .
The human outer or peripheral shell (skin, subcutaneous fat etc.) acts as an adjustable insulator/radiator with the main mechanism of adjustment being blood flow to this compartment. If the surroundings are warm then heat loss is less, so the body directs more blood to the periphery to maintain the gradient for energy flow.
Adjusting the human body temperature downward has been used therapeutically, in particular, as a method of stabilizing a body following trauma. It has been suggested that adjusting the adenosine A1 receptor of the hypothalamus may allow humans to enter a hibernation -like state of reduced body temperature, which could be useful for applications ...
The resting human body generates about two-thirds of its heat through metabolism in internal organs in the thorax and abdomen, as well as in the brain. The brain generates about 16% of the total heat produced by the body. [8] Heat loss is a major threat to smaller creatures, as they have a larger ratio of surface area to volume.
Thermogenic means tending to produce heat, and the term is commonly applied to drugs which increase heat through metabolic stimulation, [1] or to microorganisms which create heat within organic waste. Approximately all enzymatic reaction in the human body is thermogenic, which gives rise to the basal metabolic rate. [2]
Specific dynamic action (SDA), also known as thermic effect of food (TEF) or dietary induced thermogenesis (DIT), is the amount of energy expenditure above the basal metabolic rate due to the cost of processing food for use and storage. [1]
This means that fatty acid synthesis and fatty acid catabolism cannot occur simultaneously in any given cell. A diagrammatic illustration of the process of the beta-oxidation of an acyl-CoA molecule in the mitochondrial matrix. During this process an acyl-CoA molecule which is 2 carbons shorter than it was at the beginning of the process is formed.