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When faced with a predator or sudden danger, the heart rate goes up, breathing becomes more rapid, and fuel in the form of glucose is pumped throughout the body to prepare an animal to fight or flee.

These physiological changes, which constitute the "fight or flight" response, are thought to be triggered in part by the hormone adrenaline.

But a new study from Columbia researchers suggests that bony vertebrates can't muster this response to danger without the skeleton. The researchers found in mice and humans that almost immediately after the brain recognizes danger, it instructs the skeleton to flood the bloodstream with the bone-derived hormone osteocalcin, which is needed to turn on the fight or flight response.

"In bony vertebrates, the acute stress response is not possible without osteocalcin," says the study's senior investigator Gérard Karsenty, MD, Ph.D., chair of the Department of Genetics and Development at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.

"The view of bones as merely an assembly of calcified tubes is deeply entrenched in our biomedical culture," Karsenty says. But about a decade ago, his lab hypothesized and demonstrated that the skeleton has hidden influences on other organs.

The research revealed that the skeleton releases osteocalcin, which travels through the bloodstream to affect the functions of the biology of the pancreas, the brain, muscles, and other organs.

A series of studies since then have shown that osteocalcin helps regulate metabolism by increasing the ability of cells to take in glucose, improves memory, and helps animals run faster with greater endurance.

Title		Bone, Not Adrenaline, Drives Fight or Flight Response
Date		Tuesday September 17 2019, @05:43PM
Author		janrinok
Topic
from the dem-bones,-dem-bones dept.

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