Think about everything you know about metabolism. All those days of drinking green tea and blaming your mid-20s for a random increase in weight gain. Well, it’s all fucking wrong apparently, with a brand new super study that’s shifted pretty much everything we understand about metabolism.
Look, as someone who’s been drinking green tea every day since like 12 years old (mainly because I love it), I was certainly not shy to the fact that the stuff is said to have metabolism quickening properties.
And sure, there’s a lot of debate about whether or not this is true, but according to this brand new study published in Science on Thursday, there’s pretty much no escaping our natural metabolism patterns. Great.
According to the study, all people, no matter their gender, will experience metabolism drops at the same rate. Yep, your body is no different to anyone else. Women are no slower in their metabolism than others, and our mid-20s to early-30s aren’t some metabolism graveyard like we were lead to believe.
The study was conducted by principal investigator Herman Pontzer, an evolutionary anthropologist at North Carolina’s Duke University, alongside 80 co-authors. In it, he and his science friends examined 6,500 people aged 8 days old to 95 years to collate a crazy amount of data on how our body works.
“It was really clear that we didn’t have a good handle on how body size affects metabolism or how aging affects metabolism,” Pontzer told the New York Times.
“These are basic fundamental things you’d think would have been answered 100 years ago.”
The main finding was that metabolism comes in four stages, and that these stages are innate in every human. If you have a naturally higher metabolism, you’ll still experience dips just the same as everyone else, same if you have a naturally lower metabolism. Outliers don’t matter, you see, we’re all alike!
Here are the four stages of metabolic shifts as found by the study:
- Infancy – 1 year = Our metabolism is at its highest peak, and continues to accelerate rapidly. In fact, it ultimately reaches about 50% above the adult rate. We’re all a bunch of fat-burning bubs!
- 1 – 20 = Once we reach this section, our metabolism decides to slow down by roughly 3% a year.
- 20-60 = At this age range, our metabolism decides to hold steady! So yeah, no swift decline in our 40s or 30s. Smooth sailing all the way.
- 60 onwards = Here is when metabolism declines by 0.7 percent a year. No surprise that older age makes our bodies change, but it’s at least reassuring that it only starts to decline at 60.
So there you have it, some new information to set your mind at ease about metabolism shifts.
