I know in like 2004 leptin was the talk on the boards pushed by a guy who went by par Deus and stared avantlabs. No surprise he came out with his leptigen a supplement to increase leptin lol. I think Lyle talked about it and said bromocriptine raised it. And claimed that when you go low carb you then refeed and Jack up your leptin and metabolized and burn even more fat.
But I don't see anyone talking about leptin or saying you can go crazy with refeeds it's still calories in vs calories out. Also with so many guys getting and staying lean with keto, it kind of debunks the importance of leptin imo
If letpin is so important than wouldn't all these lean people doing keto and only carbing up 1x a week be stalling out or miserable?
I think the fact that leptin is a complicated hormone and not a simple more is better or less is better made the masses loose interest in it quickly. Nuanced "it depends" type of things usually fall out of favor quickly as people want easy to do easy to understand with me/against me type of shit lol.
This is an excerpt from Dsades write up for his product Epitome. It does a good job of showing how "it depends" really applies to leptin.
Leptin Overview
I want to start with a short and sweet Leptin overview, which will be new to some and a refresher to others. Leptin is a hormone that structurally belongs to the cytokine family made primarily in white adipose tissue (WAT), but it is also produced in other areas of the body in lesser amounts, like brown adipose tissue (BAT) and skeletal muscle, among others. It’s primary function, particularly for our purposes, is controlling hunger and satiety. When we have optimal Leptin levels in conjunction with optimal Leptin sensitivity, as our energy stores fill up, the “fed state” is signaled and we are no longer driven to eat. When this system becomes dysfunctional, like in obesity or calorie restriction, everything goes haywire and we end up with strong hunger signals even when the body doesn’t need calories.
Like most hormones and adipokines, and pretty much anything responsible for any amount of signaling in the body, we function best when it is at an “optimal” level, we don’t want it super high or super low.
A number of things control the synthesis, release, and sensitivity to Leptin, but there are two main factors to be concerned with. These are fat stores (cell size and number), and energy balance. The important thing to remember is that a calorie deficit causes Leptin to drop, and a calorie surplus causes Leptin to rise. Part of the reason why people tend to hit a wall after extended dieting is this drop in Leptin levels. One of the common ways people deal with this is by implementing regular cheat days where they eat a bunch of carbs and a huge calorie surplus. However, this method is not without drawbacks, and with proper supplementation (Epitome), this becomes unnecessary.
In obesity, we typically see elevated Leptin, which causes reduced sensitivity. The constant over-supply of Leptin causes the receptors to downregulate. So we’ve got plenty of this stuff around, but the body has no idea what to do with it. As an example, let’s say every morning you go into Starbucks to buy coffee. But every time you pull your wallet out, it’s just full of Jordanian Dinar instead of dollar bills. You’ve got like, 100,000 Dinar in there, which is possibly enough to buy the whole coffee shop, but the Baristas have no idea what to do with it so you leave sad and confused with no coffee.
When an individual is obese, or has an endomorphic phenotype (who have similar biochemistry to the obese), and they lose weight, they will experience a major drop in Leptin levels, typically below that optimal window. So take Person A, who is naturally a fairly lean 180lbs, and Person B, who is an endomorph that dieted down from 215 to 180, and Person B is going to have lower Leptin levels and messed up neuroendocrine signaling giving him a strong desire to overeat and get back to that original weight. Even the emotional response to eating is highly controlled by Leptin in the brain, so Person B is getting stronger physiological signals (hunger pangs/fatigue), as well as psychological signals (specific cravings, increased reward response to food). Also chalk up the reduced resting energy expenditure from low Leptin, and you’ve got a brutal combination.