Milk has a magic ingredient which helps you burn fat

Are you watching your weight ? 

Odds are, as someone who is weight conscious you’ve ditched milk from your diet, or if you haven’t cut it completely, you’ve down graded to white coloured water, commonly referred to as skim milk.

Forbidden fruit ?

The health gurus have convinced us that full cream milk, makes us fat.  Although, the evidence for this is a little scanty….

• the fat kids are all drinking skim milk while the thin kids chug down full cream milk and
• fat cells are quickly pacified by a bottle of milk  

Milk is a fantastic source of lots of nutrients beyond that vilified saturated fat ingredient, some of them we can buy in expensive multi-vitamins, while others are a little more obscure. For example,  trans-palmitoelic acid  pops up in full cream milk and seems to protect us from getting diabetes and peptides in milk, manage to jam up our MORs (mu-opiod receptors), putting the brakes on our brain’s cry to “Feed me MORE”.  

French researchers have pinpointed a new ingredient in milk which boosts both metabolism and longevity. The new “vitamin” is nicotinamide riboside.

So what does nicotinamide riboside do ?

It stimulates the functioning of a protein called sirtuin 1 or SIRT1 for short  – you maybe thinking, who cares.  It is significant when you realize the family of sirtuin proteins, are master regulators of our genes.  

SIRT1 is important in cell metabolism and the more of it that is around, the less oxidative stress happens.  Oxidative stress is responsible for producing damaging chemicals, that contribute to many “diseases” including insulin resistance. 

The sirtuin genes have been nicknamed by scientists as the longevity genes,  because fiddling with these genes, causes worms and things, to live a whole lot longer than they normally do. 

NOTE :  Resveratrol,  THE wine wonder chemical, is also thought to trigger the SIRT1 protein.  And we all agree, drinking a little bit of wine, is good for both your head and your heart. 

Squelching the fat

The French team fed groups of mice a diet designed to pack on the pounds (high fat diet).

Half of the mice also “supplemented” their high calorie diet, with large amounts of nicotinamide riboside, the other half just got a placebo ( a dud pill).

The mice taking the nicotinamide riboside, turned into little fat burning running machines. They seemed to love running and could keep going forever, like the energy bunny and all that RUNNING left them skinny.

Milk magic ?

The amount of nicotinamide riboside in a glass of milk is pretty small.   It won’t be enough to turn you into a skinny marathon runner, although it is a pretty good, low cost, sports drink. 

But, it’s presence serves to remind us, that foods are full of little extras.  These little extras all contribute to our over health and wellbeing, they’re missing when we try to get our nutrition from vitamin supplements, instead of  REAL FOOD.

So eat REAL FOOD and don’t be afraid of drinking a glass of full cream milk every now and again.

The NAD precursor nicotinamide riboside enhances oxidative metabolism and protects against high-fat diet induced obesity. Cell Metabolism (2012)15(6),  CanCarles Cantó, Riekelt H. Houtkooper, Eija Pirinen, Dou Y. Youn, Maaike H. Oosterveer, Yana Cen, Pablo J. Fernandez-Marcos, Hiroyasu Yamamoto, Pénélope A. Andreux, Philippe Cettour-Rose et al.

 

Interested in learning more about the chemistry behind those extra fat layers ?

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Further reading

Could too much vitamin B3 be causing the obesity epidemic ?	To overcome lactose intolerance borrow some lactase from your bugs	Sun is more than a skin burner it is also a fat burner

The 7 Big Spoons™…. are master switches that turn health on.

Balance Eicosanoids	Rein in insulin	Dial down stress	Sleep !	Increase Vit D	Culivate microflora	Think champion

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