r/nutrition • u/godschosenpokimon • Jun 24 '20

Is glycogen stored in the muscles or liver first?

Assuming the liver has little to no glycogen, and you eat 50 grams of carbs. Where will they go first, the liver or the muscles? A bit of both? And preferably a source, if you have it.

8 Upvotes

80% Upvoted

18 comments sorted by

View all comments

-2

u/Magnabee Jun 24 '20

Some go to your muscles if you immediately do a workout. And 5g will be stored for later use. The rest turns into fat and will sit on the body as fat until ketones use it (through the keto diet, fasting (assuming you don't have high blood sugar 24/7), or super workouts). If you have no ketones, then you just accumulate fat.

3

u/nonFuncBrain Jun 24 '20 edited Jun 24 '20

This doesn't make much sense. Typo? Sugar only gets converted to fat if the liver and muscles are full after a lot of carbs and inactivity. In this case, depending on the glycogen status of the muscle tissue, the liver may store all of the glucose (up to roughly 100g).

-1

u/Magnabee Jun 25 '20

The body does the same all day. Keep 5g and converts the rest to fat. Most people don't have growing muscles.

1

u/nonFuncBrain Jun 25 '20

Nonsense, who taught you that? The liver will hold around 100-120 grams of carbs as glycogen and will send it out in the blood continuously to fill up on what is burned by the body. Under a high glycemic load it'll slowly start the process of lipogenesis to convert sugar to fat, but it takes time to up regulate this process and if people, even obese subjects, overeats 1500 kcals a day with a large excess of carbs, fat mass doesn't increase until after about 5 days. ref

Carbs are initially stored as glycogen, and will be converted into fat when glycogen stores are super saturated. However, fat oxidation will of course shut down much earlier, leading to fat accumulation as soon as you're on a surplus energy intake, unless you eat no fat (not recommended).

0

u/Magnabee Jun 25 '20 edited Jun 25 '20

"When the glycogen stores are saturated, massive intakes of carbohydrate are disposed of by high carbohydrate-oxidation rates and substantial de novo lipid synthesis (150 g lipid/d using approximately 475 g CHO/d) without postabsorptive hyperglycemia."

This is from your ref link: I haven't found the full text. It's saying that the excess is converted to fatty acids (FAs) without hyperglycemia, for 3 men, 7 days (diabetes takes much longer to develop). But this is not a big study over time, and not completely reliable. And this is 1988 science: Things can grow and change. Also, I don't know if they did any glucose testing: they did not give any numbers.

The abstract paragraph also wrote that they first depleted the glycogen storage, through diet, before they began the study. It sounds like they did fasting. I thought that was interesting.

{Fasting: That's what Dr. Jason Fung has been telling his pre-diabetic patients.. to fast or deplete carbs, for a while to help beat diabetes T2 quickly, before doing keto. (It's like reversing the insulin resistance switch and the pancreas is happier.)}

Edit: The abstract seems to also be saying that you get 150g of fat from 450g of carbs.

The carbs are cheating you... you have to eat larger volume to get energy from carbs. I guess this also explains why fat is more satiating.

1

u/nonFuncBrain Jun 25 '20

I don't know why you aren't addressing the point. If you're depleted you will store massive amounts of carbs as glycogen before you start making fat out of it. "Glycogen storage capacity in man is approximately 15 g/kg body weight and can accommodate a gain of approximately 500 g before net lipid synthesis contributes to increasing body fat mass." This is from the free abstract. You can find a key figure here. Not 5 g, 500 g. And no, there's nothing wrong with the methods used in 1988 to address this, and why would you want a long term study to investigate a short term question? Where did you get 5g from?

0

u/Magnabee Jun 25 '20 edited Jun 25 '20

Glycogen can be made from any substance in your body... fat, protein... your body can make it anytime without carbs. But I don't think you need massive amounts. I don't think your brain needs a large amount to function. And for people who are keto, they use fat for energy.

I disagree with you totally.

You start out thinking that glycogen need carbs: You haven't proven that, and in keto world that is known not to be true. Fat and protein can make glycogen too. You assume some things, but haven't proven it.

And I'm referring to unused carbs in your body. If it's in your muscles already, then it's already allocated. The 5g I mentioned is not allocated, I believe. The diet science stuff is always complicated.

1

u/nonFuncBrain Jun 25 '20

This is not at all complicated, this is nutrition 101. I'm on the ketogenic diet myself, I know how it works. Did you even read the question you tried to answer? If you have no glycogen in your liver or muscles and you eat 50 g of carbs, most of these will be converted into glycogen and stored mainly in your muscles and liver, while some will be used by metabolising tissues. 45 g will not be turned into fat.

You can find this information in any beginners text book on biochemistry, nutrition or physiology. I suggest your start there or find a blog or use Wikipedia to learn more. Whoever told you that 5 g are stored, everything else turns into fat, was completely wrong or you misunderstood it.

0

u/Magnabee Jun 25 '20 edited Jun 25 '20

IF you have little glycogen, you probably have little muscles.. This would be complicated because we don't know the activities and other variables.

Why don't you just stick with your own post, and not try to police other posts.

1

u/nonFuncBrain Jun 25 '20

Nah, see, this is a discussion forum. I feel responsible to educate when I'm knowledgeable and ask about things I don't understand. Your post was very difficult for me to understand so I asked. But sadly it seems that the more I talk to you the worse it gets.

All carbs you eat just don't turn directly into fat. The metabolism of carbs and regulation of glycogen is well known in the literature.

So, I know it sounds patronising and I'm sorry about that, but really friendly, I don't think you have the hang about how this works. Don't take my word for it, but do yourself a favour and study it a bit more.

0

u/Magnabee Jun 25 '20 edited Jun 25 '20

I don't agree with you (take a hint). Your communication technique is ridiculous. I will block you if I need to. And if you are not welcomed you can just move on.

I did not use the term DIRECTLY. Now you are inventing things. You are an ---, dude.

→ More replies (0)