Fasting or skipping meals. Exercise with the goal of burning a lot of calories. Go hungry by eating very little with the aim of losing weight faster. What do these strategies have in common? Simple.

They slow down the metabolism , leading to that state known as “starvation mode” which, however, had never been scientifically proven until now, but only from an observational point of view. Today, however, a very important study reveals that, when the body is low on energy, the liver is activated by producing a hormone. A hormone that slows down the metabolism, thus making us burn fewer calories.

HOW THE HORMONE WORKS THAT SLOWS DOWN METABOLISM

The research, by the University of Michigan Life Sciences Institute, and published in the journal Nature Metabolism , talks about a negative metabolic feedback by  Tsukushi, a factor of hepatic secretion that is activated in the event that the body signals that it has little energy available. TSK would therefore act on the metabolism, after being produced by the liver, lowering the energy demand. In people who tend to gain weight, the Tsukushi (from the name of its discoverer) is high, in those with a high metabolism it is lower.

So, anyone who overdoes their diet or exercise, or skips meals to push their body to lose more weight, will now have bad news. That the metabolism, due to the liver, is lowered as soon as the body receives less energy. And that this mechanism is practically immediate