ABSTRACT
Body mass in humans and animals is strongly associated with the rate of heat production as defined by resting energy expenditure (REE). Beginning with the ancient Greeks up to the present time, philosophers and scientists have endeavored to understand the nature and sources of bodily heat. Today we recognize that body mass consists of organs and tissues, each of which produces a specified amount of heat at rest. An individual organ’s REE can now be estimated in vivo as the product of its assumed mass-specific metabolic rate and its imaging-derived mass; whole-body REE reflects the sum of organ and tissue metabolic rates. The sizes of organs and total body mass in adults are governed by two main factors, a person’s stature or height, and their level of adiposity. With greater body size, as represented by adult height independent of adiposity, organs remain stable or increase in mass according to distinct “scaling” patterns. Similarly, with greater relative adiposity organs adaptively accommodate to the increase in imposed mechanical and metabolic loading conditions. Through a detailed analysis of these stature and adiposity effects, we show how classical statistical REE prediction models can be mechanistically understood at the anatomic body composition level.
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Acknowledgements
The author acknowledges Melanie Peterson for her support in preparing this review.
Funding
This work was partially supported by two National Institutes of Health NORC Center Grants P30DK072476, Pennington/Louisiana; and P30DK040561, Harvard; and R01DK109008, Shape UP! Adults.
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SBH, DMT, ABW, and MJM drafted the manuscript and edited the manuscript for intellectual content.
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The author SBH is on the Medical Advisory Boards of Tanita and Medifast Corporations. The other authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
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Heymsfield, S.B., Thomas, D.M., Bosy-Westphal, A. et al. The anatomy of resting energy expenditure: body composition mechanisms. Eur J Clin Nutr 73, 166–171 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41430-018-0319-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41430-018-0319-3
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