Substrate cycles: their metabolic, energetic and thermic consequences in man.

The role of substrate cycles in metabolic control was first indicated over ten years ago, but the recent interest in such cycles has developed from the direct demonstration by isotopic techniques of their existence in various tissues. I propose that substrate cycles form part of a logical series of biochemical mechanisms that exist to increase the sensitivity of non-equilibrium reactions to changes in concentrations of metabolic regulators. The possible importance of such cycles for provision of precise metabolic regulation in the tissues of the normal subject and the trained athlete is proposed. Furthermore, cycling may provide a mechanism by which hormones can change the magnitude of response in a tissue to a given metabolic signal, without interfering in the biochemistry of the basic control mechanism. It is, however, possible to extend the role of cycling to heat generation and thus to controlled energy loss by an organism. Heat generation by substrate cycles may be important as an acute mechanism for maintaining the body temperature in man in response to a sudden decrease in the environmental temperature; alcoholic hypothermia would be explained by inhibition of substrate cycling in the liver, and accidental hypothermia in the elderly could be explained by decreased capacity of substrate cycles with age. If heat generated by the cycles is rapidly lost to the environment, the expenditure of energy to maintain this heat loss could explain, in part, the physiological phenomena of the thermic response to food and the oxygen debt which is always observed after exercise. Finally, the energy expended in these ways could be part of a general biochemical mechanism for maintenance of the correct body weight; a decrease in the capacity of substrate cycles might be one factor involved in the development of obesity.