Muscle Physiology and Feeding the Performance/Working Dog

If you can find ground pork that stuff is very fatty as well and cheap.

 

The best fat is that pure white fat that comes from around the kidneys or kidney area of a bovine.

 

Just a point of note is that the dog must be doing work and using the fat up as energy when feeding diets high in fat, you don't want to get a Hypertriglyceridemia situation which is a disease of too much triglycerides in the system. Dogs have a tolerance level for fat so if you give too much the dog could become ill.

 

I believe this to be true, so what you're saying is the fat, protein and carbohydrate have to be used up through working the dog regularly so that the dog can become used to/accustomed to cycling through those energy systems and fuel derived from the fats, carbohydrates and protein and then the worked off energy stores would be replenished with his next meal and so the cycle would go on. I would imagine that it wouldn't be good to pump the dog up on these nutritional fuels and then not let him work it off, the dog would become rather plump lol.

 

thanks slim12, no problem.Dead has one meaning applied two ways, only one is a compulsion,"absolute utter and accurate" which is where we get "dead beat" "dead drunk" "dead on" and "dead game" from, it gives a measure.

I agree their is no value in a deceased dog, your the one placing all the value of gameness in the deceased as the ultimate definition and level of it.That makes the gamer and gamest of two in effort the deceased which is absurd.Dead game cannot only be obtained/attained in one manner that leaves the dog deceased without missunderstanding and missapplying the term and words.

It has nothing to do with portrayal,guessing or abstractions on deceased dogs, its about the measure of a substance or state.

Game isnt a subjective term unless you change the meaning.One mans game can only be cur when cur is proven,and one mans treasure as another mans junk doesnt change the substance.When a dog refuses to go again when asked because it cant cur isnt proven,only when it can.

You state their is no value in being dead to a dog.Your applying dead to dog to define value in gameness.Im applying dead to game to define value in gameness.

 

IDITAROD SLED DOGS FAT BURNING CAPABILITIES
Liz o'connell


Normal Metabolism

When we say metabolism, we reference bodily processes that convert or use energy. Think digestion, muscle use, blood circulation, breathing, and the functioning of nerve networks and the brain, and much more. Metabolism includes catabolism that breaks down i.e. nutrients into energy, and anabolism, which uses that energy to construct things we need.

We gain energy from catabolism. Proteins are broken down into amino acids and can be converted into other compounds– used to make glucose, for instance. Glucose is carried by the blood stream. It is also stored in muscles and in the liver as glycogen, which is a complex carbohydrate. Any extra energy that humans get from metabolism is stored either as glycogen or as fat.

Glycogen is useful; it is very important to the function of muscles. Muscles use glycogen as fuel to power physical activity.

Strenuous exercise

Heavy exercise prompts muscles to use glycogen. As human endurance athletes exercise they burn calories, deplete their glycogen and thus their muscular energy reserves, and stress their bodies. Marathon runners and athletes undergoing intensive training diminish stores of glycogen and protein, build up lactic acid, and eventually become fatigued at which point they must rest and recover until their stores are replenished.

Dogs normally metabolize energy as explained above. Long-distance endurance runs, however, cause sled dogs’ metabolism to radically alter. It has been compared to throwing a metabolic switch. Veterinarian Michael Davis, Oklahoma State University Center for Veterinary Health Sciences, has been investigating the phenomenon since 2001.

“Before the race, the dogs’ metabolic makeup is similar to humans. Then suddenly they throw a switch — we don’t know what it is yet — that reverses all of that,” Davis explained. “Dogs will go from using their reserves to not.” In 24 to 48 hours, endurance-conditioned sled dogs “Change their metabolism so they don’t use up their reserves anymore.” Within four days the dogs can “Go back to the same type of metabolic baseline you see in resting subjects. But it’s while they are running 100 miles a day.”

Despite consecutive days of strenuous exercise, the dogs don’t become fatigued like human endurance athletes do. Instead, they rapidly adjust to the demands of running the race. This physiological capability makes sled dogs the perfect athlete for the Iditarod.

Davis said, you can “Take dogs out and you run them 100 miles per day today and tomorrow and the next day, and they come back, sleep, eat, do it again without having any outward sign of it mattering.” In fact when the dogs run in more than one strenuous race in the season “They don’t just continue to perform, they perform a lot better.” Davis pointed out “They can do it indefinitely, as long as you have trail and they’ve got food. They get tired, but they don’t fatigue in the biochemical sense.” They are essentially fatigue proof.

Could humans do it too?

Dr. Davis has been analyzing blood and muscle samples from long-distance running canines in Alaska to try to discover what flips that metabolic switch. Humans could benefit deeply from the discovery. Imagine: greater endurance for athletes, avoiding fatigue for i.e. armed forces, and perhaps even benefits for diabetics and another tool in the fight against obesity. Davis speaks of the dogs: “They have a hidden strategy that they can turn on,” and “We are confident that humans have the capacity for that strategy. We have to figure out how dogs are turning it on,” in order “To turn it on in humans.”

Getting oxygen moving

Long-distance canine athletes have powerful lungs and circulatory systems which are capable of delivering plenty of oxygen to their muscles. The ratio of the volume of oxygen delivered to the body’s weight per minute is called aerobic capacity. An elite human athlete’s aerobic capacity is something like 60-80 ml/kg/min Vo2max. An untrained sled dog’s is 175 ml/kg/min VO2max. A trained and racing sled dog’s average aerobic capacity is roughly 300 ml/kg/min VO2max. That great ability to move oxygen to the muscles that need it lends itself well to a sled dog’s repertoire.

What’s more, racing sled dogs are great at moving energy swiftly into their muscle cells.

Converting fat to fuel

Glycogen, the complex carbohydrate compound which stores energy to supply to muscles, is utilized by the sled dogs at first. After the metabolic switch is flipped in racing dogs the animals use a glycogen-sparing metabolism instead. Their glycogen stores replenish as opposed to becoming depleted. Instead of converting proteins or fats into glycogen, they seem to be pulling fat from their bloodstream into their cells and utilizing it for energy. Davis’ findings suggest that the canines are directly burning fat.

It might be made possible by the dogs’ surplus of mitochondria: cellular power plants. Dogs have roughly 70% more mitochondria per cell than humans have. Davis speculates that the canines are extracting fat from the bloodstream and somehow moving it into the mitochondria of their muscle cells. We’re not certain how that transportation takes place, but the hormone insulin seems to play an important role. With their high-fat racing diet, the use of fat for energy, and their numerous mitochondria, dogs can obtain and burn fuel very efficiently.

“The faster you can get stuff into a muscle cell, the faster you can use it,” Davis said. When the switch is thrown, “They may get better at pulling fat out of the bloodstream on the fly.”

Transporters are proteins that move fatty acids, glucose and complex carbohydrates from the bloodstream across cell membranes and into the mitochondria power plants. Davis is hard at work decoding the mystery of the canines’ transporters; normally dogs use transporters similar to the ones humans use, but not during endurance races like the Iditarod. “Something is transporting the fat into dog muscle,” he said, “But it isn’t the transporter that we [humans] use.”

 

LEARNING FAT BURNING SECRETS FROM SLED DOGS
Cracking the metabolic secrets of distance racing canines.
Krista West.

With tongue and tail wagging wildly, Larry the lead dog crossed the finish line in March in sunny Nome, Alaska—after running 1,131 miles to win the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race for the third year in a row. To most mortals, Larry looks like a happy but nondescript, scrawny mutt. To sled dog mushers, he is a mini legend that simply needs no introduction. To scientists, Larry may hold the key to a physiological mystery.

Specifically, sled dogs seem to flip an internal switch that acutely changes how they burn fat calories, allowing them to keep going and going and going with no obvious pain. Figuring out how that mechanism works may have implications for human diabetics and those battling obesity.

Researchers first discovered the metabolic switch in 2005, when a team headed by Oklahoma State University’s Michael Davis—who has been investigating the metabolic, gastrointestinal, respiratory and blood systems of sled dogs for 10 years—did a controlled study at a professional racing kennel in Alaska. Mushers ran the dogs in mock, 100-mile races for four to five days in a row. Every 100 miles the researchers took matchstick-size samples of leg muscle (about 60 milligrams apiece) from the dogs to test for protein levels, enzyme activity and glycogen, a starchlike compound that stores energy for quick release.

Glycogen turns out to be a crucial piece of the metabolic switch. During the first few days of racing, sled dogs draw energy from glycogen stored inside muscle cells. But instead of depleting glycogen stores and tiring the muscles, the animals suddenly switch to a glycogen-sparing metabolism. They start drawing energy from sources outside of the muscles.

Davis suggests that the muscle cells start extracting fat directly from the blood and somehow transport this fat across the cell membranes and into the cells, where it can be burned as fuel. During race times, fat builds up in a sled dog’s blood, most likely because of the high-fat racing diet. Each 50-pound canine consumes about 12,000 calories daily (typically 60 percent fat and 40 percent carbohydrate and protein).

According to Raymond Geor, an exercise physiologist at Michigan State University, sled dog muscle cells are well equipped to use this fat because they have a higher mitochondrial density—more cellular power plants—than other animals. The mystery is how the blood-borne fat gets into cells in the first place. Increasing evidence suggests that fat is transported into the cells along similar pathways as glucose, Davis says, with the hormone insulin playing a critical role. Researchers are exploring the sled dog’s sensitivity to insulin to better understand this pathway.

Breeding probably had much to do with the development of the metabolic switch. Larry is descended from a long line of racing dogs. “The bloodlines of my dogs date back 100 years,” says Lance Mackey, Larry’s owner and legendary racing musher, the only person to win the long-distance Iditarod and the Yukon Quest in the same year with the same dog team. “They are mixed breeds—mutts—but they’ve been bred to run.”

Selective breeding, though, may not be the whole story. The dogs may have learned to switch metabolic strategies on demand through intense training. If so, then researchers might have an easier time applying what they learn about the canines to humans training for an endurance event or those seeking treatment for diabetes or obesity. Such patients might benefit, for instance, if researchers could pinpoint the mechanisms that boost the body’s sensitivity to insulin or that better utilize fat that builds up in muscle tissue.

 

I would imagine that one would dig a hole and bury it :-)

 

thanks slim12,i havent a clue how you got to climate control industrialization and meat right off an animal.Humans already know how to run on fat and utilize insulin response.The scientific research on sled dogs proves a switch can be flipped in a 24-48hr window to conserve glycogen for even higher intensity effort allowing cooler work for longer straight from fat.Also proving more work for longer has a beneficial effect on the dog becoming fatigue proof.

 

Thanks slim12,based on the points i made your asking me what you do with an extremely game dog and is it basically useless.Progeny and ALL others must at least have the capacity to equal the ancestry if they ever hopes to surpass it.

ALL measures, weights, scales, capacity, strength of spirit, and life belong to the LORD.He despises inaccurate measures as abominations,and delights in accurate ones.The measure you give he returns back to you.

 

Slim12,you agreed with Kelticwarriors claim a dog runs hot via the oxidative switch.The metabolic switch discovered after only 4 years of scientific study proves you both as dead wrong on that issue as you are on this.

Your repeated claim their is no value to a dead dog, is a contradiction, your placing all the value in gameness in a dead dog as the ultimate definition and level of it, giving an inaccurate measure.

 

Oxidative phosphorylation (or OXPHOS in short) is the metabolic pathway in which the mitochondria in cells use their structure, enzymes, and energy released by the oxidation of nutrients to reform ATP. ATP is the molecule that supplies energy to metabolism. Almost all aerobic organisms carry out oxidative phosphorylation. This pathway is probably so pervasive because it is a highly efficient way of releasing energy, compared to alternative fermentation processes such as anaerobic glycolysis.
During oxidative phosphorylation, electrons are transferred from electron donors to electron acceptors such as oxygen, in redox reactions. These redox reactions release energy, which is used to form ATP. In eukaryotes, these redox reactions are carried out by a series of protein complexes within the cell's intermembrane wall mitochondria, whereas, in prokaryotes, these proteins are located in the cells' intermembrane space. These linked sets of proteins are called electron transport chains. In eukaryotes, five main protein complexes are involved, whereas in prokaryotes many different enzymes are present, using a variety of electron donors and acceptors.
The energy released by electrons flowing through this electron transport chain is used to transport protons across the inner mitochondrial membrane, in a process called electron transport. This generates potential energy in the form of a pH gradient and an electrical potential across this membrane. This store of energy is tapped by allowing protons to flow back across the membrane and down this gradient, through a large enzyme called ATP synthase; this process is known as chemiosmosis. This enzyme uses this energy to generate ATP from adenosine diphosphate (ADP), in a phosphorylation reaction. This reaction is driven by the proton flow, which forces the rotation of a part of the enzyme; the ATP synthase is a rotary mechanical motor.
Oxidative phosphorylation works by using energy-releasing chemical reactions to drive energy-requiring reactions: The two sets of reactions are said to be coupled. This means one cannot occur without the other. The flow of electrons through the electron transport chain, from electron donors such as NADH to electron acceptors such as oxygen, is an exergonic process * it releases energy, whereas the synthesis of ATP is an endergonic process, which requires an input of energy. Both the electron transport chain and the ATP synthase are embedded in a membrane, and energy is transferred from electron transport chain to the ATP synthase by movements of protons across this membrane, in a process called chemiosmosis. In practice, this is like a simple electric circuit, with a current of protons being driven from the negative N-side of the membrane to the positive P-side by the proton-pumping enzymes of the electron transport chain. These enzymes are like a battery, as they perform work to drive current through the circuit. The movement of protons creates an electrochemical gradient across the membrane, which is often called the proton-motive force. It has two components: a difference in proton concentration (a H+ gradient, ΔpH) and a difference in electric potential, with the N-side having a negative charge.
ATP synthase releases this stored energy by completing the circuit and allowing protons to flow down the electrochemical gradient, back to the N-side of the membrane.This kinetic energy drives the rotation of part of the enzymes structure and couples this motion to the synthesis of ATP. The two components of the proton-motive force are thermodynamically equivalent: In mitochondria, the largest part of energy is provided by the potential. Inversely, chloroplasts operate mainly on ΔpH. However, they also require a small membrane potential for the kinetics of ATP synthesis. The amount of energy released by oxidative phosphorylation is high, compared with the amount produced by anaerobic fermentation. Glycolysis produces only 2 ATP molecules, but somewhere between 30 and 36 ATPs are produced by the oxidative phosphorylation of the 10 NADH and 2 succinate molecules made by converting one molecule of glucose to carbon dioxide and water, while each cycle of beta oxidation of a fatty acid yields about 14 ATPs. These ATP yields are theoretical maximum values; in practice, some protons leak across the membrane, lowering the yield of ATP.

 

There's an electrical charge flowing through the mitochondria when the oxidative system kicks in cuz, the process generates heat.

 

Thanks slim12, kelticwarrior made the claim in post no."68" you agreed with "very true" in post no."69".

Dead game IS the ultimate definition and level of gameness, so it does have value but not the way you understand and apply the term as a subjective,contradictory,inaccurate measure.You cant escape problems of your own creation least of all by denying them and the measure you give is always returned back to you.

Death isnt the ultimate expression of gameness,life is.Dead game doesnt mean dead dog it means extreme gameness.If it did mean dead dog,and your claim that its the ultimate definition and level of it were true, the deceased of two in effort would be the gamer and gamest which is absurd,and a dog taking its death in 10min the gamer and gamest over a 2hr living deep game dog, which is equally absurd.You cannot know whether a dog is game or cur at the moment of death you can only know its actions up to its death.A game dog that dies is a dead dog, but a game dog that dies showing extreme gameness has proven the definition.

No one is claiming a dog taking its death earns a title with no value but you.No ones claiming death is the ultimate definition and level of gameness but you.The measure is always accurate and always has the highest value.Their are no subjective levels to be determined by a beholder, unless the beholder doesnt understand what is beheld.You cannot kill spirit,you can only crush it and the more you try crush a truly strong spirit the stronger it becomes.A dead dog that showed no great strength of spirit before death isnt dead game in any way shape or form its simply a dead dog.

Go back to the original English rules(measure),you couldnt simply win by causing the death of an opponent, you had to stay at them for a minimum period and still scratch back if it was your turn.A dog that showed such extreme gameness causing the death of others before its own, continued trying and scratched back when asked,and would rather give its own life trying than to quit is the gamest spirit that could/can be produced.Its the definition of dead game in the living or the deceased.Gameness is a measure of heart in all senses of the word,and its measure in life is always greater than in death.