Python Digestion Could be the Key to Heart Health

Pythons are known for their remarkable ability to devour large animals--alligators, deer, and pigs, for example--in one sitting. More peculiar, though, is the digestion process that occurs within this large animal; within a day, their heart, liver and other organs can double in size. Their "metabolic rate and production of insulin and lipids will soar." Leslie Lienwand, a biologist at the University of Colorado describes this dramatic physiological change in blood composition: "after a meal, python blood is so full or triglycerides that it appears milky." Remarkably, this process seems to have no negative effects on their cardiac health, however. Within a week, the organs have returned to their normal size. After a couple weeks (or months), the snake repeats the process.

It’s easy to imagine that the effects of repeated sudden caloric intakes like this in a human would be detrimental to our health. When we digest fats, bile and lipase work quickly to break down fat into an absorbable form. Once absorbed, fatty acids and monoglycerides are transformed into triglycerides that enter the blood stream and are transported throughout the body for energy storage. In the process, fats build up in the arteries and can eventually lead to health problems like atherosclerosis, high blood pressure and heart attacks.

In an experiment at the University of Colorado, preliminary research was performed on the Burmese Python to determine how exactly the heart doubles in size. Chemical stains to measure cell size and the number of nuclei were observed under a microscope. “The observations showed that the python heart expansion was from hypertrophy, not the formation of new cells,” said Dr. Lienwand.

As it turns out, hypertrophy, or an increase in the volume of an organ or tissue due to the enlargement of its cells, can occur in the human heart in two ways. One, a leading predictor of death, occurs as a result of unhealthy conditions like high blood pressure and heart attacks. The second type, seen in well-conditioned athletes, is beneficial. Research performed by a team including Dr. Leslie Lienwand at The University of Colorado showed that the enlargement of the Burmese Python’s heart is “analogous to the growth seen in the heart of a human athlete” (Altman).

Oddly enough, when the plasma of a full Burmese python was injected into starved pythons, mice and rats, a doubling in the size of their organs resulted. It was found that high levels of myristic palmitic and mapmitoleic fatty acids along with an enzyme superoxide dismutase (SOD) are responsible for these results. The three fatty acids allow the cells to grow, and the presence of SOD protects the python’s heart from the toxic effects of large lipid intakes.

Because myristic palmitic and mapmitoleic fatty acids occur naturally in the human body (but in much smaller concentrations), Dr. Leinwand, a senior member of the research team at the University of Colorado, believes these results could be a step towards finding the prevention/treatment of sudden death in young athletes, as well as other conditions like high blood pressure, obesity and diabetes.

links:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45067487/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/python-hearts-may-help-us-get-grip-cardiac-disease/#.Tq2UTRxQOeh

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/01/health/python-digestion-study-holds-promise-for-human-heart-health.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1