Dr. Martin Picard

It's when you stop exercising, boom, you get this beautiful spike of IL-6.

And then you ask, what is that?

So IL-6 is a cytokine, right?

It's a cellular signaling system.

And then IL-6 goes to your fat and then it says, we need energy.

Like lipolysis, chop out those lipids that's stored in your fat, release that in the blood because the liver needs it to make glucose.

And then the IL-6 goes to the liver as well, and then tells the liver, make glucose, because the muscle is depleted, right?

And the IL-6 burst after exercise is particularly strong if you're glycogen depleted, right?

If the muscle is out of its internal- Like after resistance training or sprinting or high intensity training-

High intensity.

Yes.

So then the IL-6 then is a signal, right, to mobilize energy.

It's the muscle's way of telling the rest of the body, I'm running low on energy, right?

Please help.

And then it recruits the fat.

It recruits the liver.

And then it sends signal to the brain.

The brain has IL-6 receptors as well.

And it says, you know, feel like crap.

Like, you need to recover.