What is Energy?

The Bioenergetic Blueprint #01

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Over the next series of articles, I want to build somewhat of a “Bioenergetic Blueprint”. Through it, I want to help others (and myself!) build a comprehensive, bottom-up understanding of the basics of bioenergetics.

If you are reading this and care only about what to do and not—without digging into why—then this series is not for you. If, on the other hand, you have always felt like your epistemological edifices in this subject were built on sand and mud, to steal Descartes’ phrase, then I hope this series will help cement your basis and confidence for good.

NB: Whilst I am obviously a fan of Dr. Raymond Peat and his tradition, I will board this topic from a “standard” perspective. This means we will discuss concepts deemed as flawed in the space, such as the laws of thermodynamics. Hopefully though, as the series develops—and if you guys enjoy it—we can dive deeper into iconoclastic topics that challenge the (neo)Platonic and Christian biases permeating modern science.

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BTW: Whether you care about details or not, there’s a good chance you’ll enjoy the Bioenergetic Section of the Impero Wiki. The wiki acts as a resource hub for aspiring Renaissance Men, and in that particular section, you’ll find golden resources on the topic. It’s completely free, and you are welcome to get it by clicking the button below:

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What is Bioenergetics?

Let us pause for a second on the name itself.

I think this is particularly important to do here because, let’s be honest, “bioenergetics” sounds a bit like bohemian bullshit. This is in part because the word “energy” has always aroused mystical connotations, and in part because the subject has been coopted, now and then, by bohemian bullshitters.

For the most skeptical among you, you’ll be happy to know bioenergetics is simply a well-established branch in biochemistry. According to Nature, arguably the most respected scientific journal in the world…

Bioenergetics is the branch of biochemistry that focuses on how cells transform energy, often by producing, storing or consuming adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Bioenergetic processes, such as cellular respiration or photosynthesis, are essential to most aspects of cellular metabolism, therefore to life itself.

In this simple paragraph, we can already get a glimpse of some of the key actors in the bioenergetic play: cells, cellular respiration, metabolism, ATP, life. As I hope you’ll come to see, these are all inextricably interlinked—and they are, in one way or another, different manifestations of energy.

Because of this, I reckon the best place to start our bioenergetic journey is precisely that one: energy. After all, as Peat himself once said:

What could be more important to understand than biological energy? Thought, growth, movement, every philosophical and practical issue involves the nature of biological energy.

And to start understanding energy, there is but one question we need to ask:

What is energy?

The word “energy” is thrown around left and right in daily life. Some days we wake up more energetic, others more lethargic. Some of our friends are “high-energy”, others rather dull. We even go as far as to say that some people “radiate good energy”, or that we don’t want to bring a certain person’s energy into our life.

But what actually is energy? and what does it do?

Behold: High Energy

In general, you can think of energy as the capacity to do work. This capacity can be stored inside different forms, and manifest itself in myriad ways.

• By "forms" I mean all the different shapes energy can take. Just as money can take the shape of coins, bills, wire transfers, etc., energy can take the shape of food, fuel, heat, etc.

• By "manifest itself" I mean all the ways in which that energy can be transformed, from one form to another, to achieve particular outcomes.

Though we often say energy is "spent" or "used", it is believed that the total energy in the universe remains constant. Scientists have reflected this observation in what they call the first law of thermodynamics, which states that…

The universe contains a constant amount of energy; energy is never created nor destroyed, merely transformed.

We can use this law to help us understand that (1) everything has a potential energy relative to its surroundings, and (2) any action involves energy transformation.

Let's take a simple example:

• A coffee cup on your desk has a certain potential energy. If you push it off the desk, it ends up with less potential energy. This is an abstract way of saying the cup on top of your desk holds in it more capacity for things to happen to it—more potential for change—relative to when it is on the floor.

• Notice how the drop itself required no energy to take place. Sure, a small amount of energy was spent by you pushing it (this is referred to as activation energy: the energy input required to overcome resistance to change), but the free fall itself required no effort from your part nor the cup's.

• On the other hand, if you were to put the cup back on your desk, some energy would indeed need to be spent for it to happen. Specifically, energy from food (calories) would have to be broken down by your body, and then converted into kinetic energy, for you to successfully grab and put the cup back on your desk.

In physics and chemistry, processes like the falling of a cup, requiring no extra energy, are termed spontaneous; those needing additional energy, like placing the cup back, are non-spontaneous.

Some other examples:

• Pulling the string of a bow to prepare for a shot is a non-spontaneous process; the string recovering its initial shape after being released in order to shoot the arrow is a spontaneous process.

• Building a sandcastle at the beach is a non-spontaneous process; it slowly decays by the passage of time is a spontaneous process.

• When Sisyphus rolls a boulder up a hill, he's participating in a non-spontaneous process; when he reaches the top and lets the boulder roll back down, he is witnessing a spontaneous process.

As you may have noticed, non-spontaneous processes are those that "fight back" against equilibrium (which is why they require energy to happen), whereas spontaneous processes are those that "let go" towards equilibrium (which is why they don't require energy to happen).

In this sense, energy is what allows things to swim against the cosmic current, so to speak, to achieve a particular objective. According to the second law of thermodynamics, that is exactly what is happening, because…

The entropy (i.e., disorder) in the universe is always increasing, and in any given system the same will happen unless energy is spent in maintaining order.

Entropy is the “cosmic current” we just referred to, a natural flow towards disorder in the absence of counteracting energy. This point is important because it can help us grasp how energy—despite what popular mechanistic prejudices say—does not lead to the “wear-and-tear” of substance; on the contrary: it is precisely what drives the conformation of matter.

Bio-energy

It is fair to say that, since the Industrial Revolution, humans have time and time again compared living organisms to machines. This video and this paper do a good job explaining and debunking this (mis)understanding. In short, cells are often regarded as cogs in a giant apparatus, with mitochondria as tiny motors, and molecules like ATP as their fuel. This outlook is familiar and comforting to us because we can understand it. It is also symptomatic of the human desire for certainty and predictability, as well as primitive, hubristic, and ultimately—wrong.

These overly mechanistic projections really took off in the early 1900’s when Max Rubner (German physiologist) and Raymond Pearl (American biologist) came up with the Rate-of-living Theory, which claimed that higher metabolic rates (i.e., higher energy requirements) resulted in shorter lifespans. This theory came to life when Raymond Pearl realized that fruit flies lived longer when their body temperatures were lower; that is when they had slower, more sluggish metabolisms. This made sense to him and was analogous to how machines would run longer and better if they ran cooler.

Thus, Pearl and others went on to theorize that organisms age as they “accumulate life”, so to speak; that our bodies store up harmful substances over time as they produce energy, and that the more energy they produce, the more they deteriorate. Some thought that people had a genetically-determined number of heartbeats to “use up”, just like washing machines have, in some sense, a pre-determined number of washes before they break. In short, they believed that life weighs on life and that the best way to live longer was to live less.

In the early 2000s, new experiments proposed a completely opposite theory, known as the Uncoupling-to-Survive Hypothesis (great theory, horrible name). In them, scientists found that mice that had 17% higher oxygen consumption (i.e., living more intensely, with faster metabolisms) lived 36% longer than those with lower oxygen consumption. As the paper noted: “this is equivalent to an age difference in humans from 75 to 102 years.”

For the first time, rather than claiming energy expenditure wears down structural integrity, this theory defended that energy and structure are interdependent and reinforce each other. Higher energy thus results in a sturdier structure—because part of that energy is spent on maintaining said structure, and because the structure is, in turn, storing energy. In the words of Nobel laureate Albert Szent-Györgyi:

A living cell requires energy not only for all of its functions, but also for maintenance of its structure. […] Life supports life, function builds structure, and structure produces function. Once the function ceases, the structure collapses: it maintains itself by working.

What seems like an unintuitive concept becomes clear once you consider that washing machines can hold their structural integrity for a long time when they are unplugged, but that living organisms disintegrate rapidly when their “life force” is cut off. From this new perspective, aging and disease became associated not with the accumulation of energy, but with the failure to transform and use energy efficiently and reliably. As Dr. Raymond Peat noted:

Life interposes itself between the “poles” of energy flow, and the flowing energy creates organization and structure, as it is dissipated into heat. Structures store some of the energy, and tend to increase in complexity, taking advantage of the flow of energy to create phase differences with expanded internal surfaces. Like a finely divided emulsion, the more highly energized the organism is, the stabler it is. It adapts to the available energy; energy is used in adaptation; the structures built with the energy are adaptive structures.

When you think of energy in this context, know that it doesn’t need to be a purely abstract concept, nor does it need to be something always separate from matter which can, when applied to it, animate it. In truth, energy also exists everywhere, all the time, as a property of matter. This can be easily exemplified through nuclear reactions: where a tiny amount of matter is transformed into a huge amount of energy. But it is also true of every living organism: any plant on Earth is, after all, turning solar energy into its very structure… and using that structure to gather more energy.

Consider how unbelievably complex and differentiated the architecture of the human brain is, and how it consumes ~20% of your total caloric intake despite accounting for ~2% of your total body weight. Compare that to low manifestations of life, which barely burn any calories and amount to nothing, like yeast. Do you see what Peat means now?

All of our functions and purposes are energy exchanges, so in our very being we represent the history of energy flowing. — Raymond Peat

Life implies energy—it is, after all, one of its most glorious manifestations. Throughout this series, we will learn that life has successfully evolved (and continues to evolve) because, at a fundamental level, matter has managed to (1) interpose itself over the flow of energy and (2) elaborate itself by exploiting its current.

Conclusion

I hope the prospect of this series has gotten you excited!

My plan for the first part is to keep talking a bit about energy, what it entails, and its manifestations. From there, I’d like to build up our knowledge of basic physics and chemistry, before actually delving into biology and metabolism.

If this is something you’d be interested in, please, let me know! I want to “confirm demand” a bit before putting a ton of hours into this. Similarly, if you have any questions and/or constructive suggestions, feel free to leave them below.

Upwards,
Yago

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