Login | July 07, 2025
Can you trick your body’s metabolism?
PETE GLADDEN
Pete’s World
Published: July 7, 2025
In the complex and confusing world of weight loss, one of the tried and true methods in which to lose weight involves dieting.
And losing weight via food restriction does indeed work, yet it isn’t always that cut and dried.
That’s because the body’s a pretty amazing biological machine.
You see, after a period of time the body can adapt to caloric restriction by actually slowing down its metabolic processes.
And once the body does this, the weight losing can gradually come to a frustrating halt.
This phenomenon is just one of the many unique surprises that our bodies can throw at us when we think we’ve found the perfect solution to a particular bodily concern.
And it’s conundrums such as this weight loss puzzle that makes one wish there were a way to actually trick the body into not readjusting its metabolism.
Well, researchers have been looking for ways to overcome this metabolic reset issue for decades.
And it appears that they just might be a step closer to finding a solution, a solution that does indeed involve a bit of genetic trickery.
In a study published in March 2025 by the University of Southern Denmark, researchers are looking at how the liver regulates its consumption of sugar and fat.
And understanding exactly how this regulation process works could improve the effectiveness of weight-loss diets as well as diabetes medications.
Here’s what’s going on.
Danish researchers are focusing in on a potential way to keep the body continually burning calories despite it being in a state of caloric restriction - the very reason it slows down its metabolism.
And it all centers around a specific gene called Plvap, a gene that lies in certain liver cells.
Now it turns out that this study was initiated as a result of previous human studies that examined people who were born without this Plvap gene, and as a consequence had problems with their lipid metabolism, the process by which our bodies break down, transport and utilize fats for energy, storage and various other cellular functions.
Turns out that the Plvap gene controls the metabolic shift of burning sugar to burning fat during fasts.
So when the Danish researchers turned off this Plvap gene in fasting lab mice they discovered that the mice’s livers didn’t recognize that their bodies were fasting and continued to burn sugar.
Now in addition to finding that they could switch off the mice’s Plvap genes, the researchers also discovered a couple of other important findings.
First, that the signal which initiates fasting-related metabolic changes emanates from stellate cells in the liver - not from the hepatocyte cells, which happen to be the liver’s primary cells that carry out metabolic activities.
Second, they found that despite fat being redirected to the mice’s muscles instead of the liver - as a result of the Plvap gene being turned off - the mice displayed no negative effects.
In addition, the mice also showed improved insulin sensitivity and lower blood sugar levels.
So let’s dig a little bit deeper to gain an understanding of what’s going on metabolically.
Okay, when the Plvap gene was turned off, the mice's livers were unable to burn fat and instead produced ketones, a product which all mammals produce during periods of fasting - and a product which in large quantities can be a serious health issue to individuals with Type 1 diabetes.
Anyway, switching off the Plvap gene deactivates the metabolic processes responsible for producing ketones.
And thus, despite the fact that fat is released into the bloodstream from fatty tissues, the liver does not absorb it.
What happens instead is that the fat is redirected to skeletal muscles where it can continue to be broken down and used as a fuel to generate heat.
So in essence when the Plvap gene is turned off the liver doesn’t know the body is fasting and it just continues to burn sugar while the muscles continue to burn fat.
Now not only are these findings important for people who want to lose weight, but they’re also important for people with type 2 diabetes - because elevated blood sugar levels can lead to chronic metabolic maladies.
So who knows, this just might be the first small step in the long process of developing a medication that can further assist in weight loss and type 2 diabetes treatments.