Herman Pontzer, PhD: Burn

Major advances in our understanding of human metabolism have been made in recent years, and they’ve been pioneered by Herman Pontzer, PhD. He, and his colleagues, are making discoveries in human metabolism and energy balance that will reshape our approach to human health for many years to come. These are fundamental breakthroughs that are providing explanations for outcomes among energy intake, exercise, and body weight that have confused us for so long.

Dr. Pontzers book:

The Hadza Fund seeks to improve the health of the Hadza community by increasing access to and supporting the costs of medical care, and by supporting research that seeks to understand the context of Hadza health by documenting their way of life.

Twitter: @HermanPontzer

Survival Of The Friendliest (book that Dr. Pontzer recommended, written by some of his friends and colleagues)

A couple of great popular-press articles are

  1. The Exercise Paradox is a great popular-press article by Dr. Pontzer in Scientific American

  2. IS THERE A LIMIT TO HUMAN ENDURANCE? SCIENCE SAYS YES: Some say the breaking point is all in your head, but new research suggests it’s also in your gut

Find all of Dr. Pontzer peer-reviewed publications HERE on PubMed

Some of his key papers on the topic include (reverse chronological order):

  1. Sitting, Squatting, and the Evolutionary Biology of Human Inactivity 2020 “Based on our results, we introduce the Inactivity Mismatch Hypothesis and propose that human physiology is likely adapted to more consistently active muscles derived from both physical activity and from nonambulatory postures with higher levels of muscle contraction.“

  2. Extreme Events Reveal an Alimentary Limit on Sustained Maximal Human Energy Expenditure 2019 “we find evidence for an alimentary energy supply limit in humans of ~2.5× BMR; greater expenditure requires drawing down the body's energy stores“

  3. Energy Constraint as a Novel Mechanism Linking Exercise and Health 2018 "Chronic exercise thus suppresses other physiological activity, including immunity, reproduction, and stress response. This exercise-induced downregulation improves health at moderate levels of physical activity but can be detrimental at extreme workloads.”

  4. Economy and Endurance in Human Evolution 2017 "The development of endurance capabilities in Homo appears to parallel the evolutionary increase in brain size, cognitive sophistication, and metabolic rate.”

  5. Constrained Total Energy Expenditure and the Evolutionary Biology of Energy Balance 2015 "The human body adapts dynamically to maintain total energy expenditure (TEE) within a narrow physiological range. Rather than increasing with physical activity in a dose-dependent manner, experimental and ecological evidence suggests the hypothesis that TEE is a relatively constrained product of our evolved physiology.”

  6. Constrained Total Energy Expenditure and Metabolic Adaptation to Physical Activity in Adult Humans 2016 "For subjects in the upper range of physical activity, total energy expenditure plateaued, supporting a Constrained total energy expenditure model. Body fat percentage and activity intensity appear to modulate the metabolic response to physical activity. Models of energy balance employed in public health should be revised to better reflect the constrained nature of total energy expenditure and the complex effects of physical activity on metabolic physiology."

Eat, Body, Move, Level 2Shawn Bearden