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Comment by fsckboy | Hacker News Reader

Our mitochondria process the total of our energy needs every day, while exercise adds, percentagewise, only fractional additional energy need.

do you think mitochondria notice the difference? I don't.

If I cut my caloric intake, I drop weight like nobody's business, and that's all thanks to my mitochondria at their place in the chain. It's the same thing my mitochondria are doing when I overeat and put on weight.

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If you live paycheck to paycheck and then get a 25% salary increase, if everything else stays the same, in a year you have already saved 300% worth of your original salary vs 0%.

That is even with your unwarranted assumption that all energy use is the same and doesn't cause different adaptations. This kind of simplicity is just not happening in biology.

Exactly, this is called a marginal effect and it's very relevant for our bodies which basically need their homeostasis disrupted to be prompted to adapt.

marginal effects are small, but it's where the integration and feedback add up or even multiply. the claim here is that the mitchondria are paying attention to their own marginal quantities which are quite small; the outsized effects if they are someplace will lie elsewhere. For example, sendentary life will lead to less muscle mass, which means fewer mitochondria overall, but that's not the individual mitochondria "noticing" anything.

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