• Question: Will finding out about the hearts fuel allow doctors to have a higher success rate at saving someone from heart disease

    Asked by tpeng to Mike on 17 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Mike Dodd

      Mike Dodd answered on 17 Jun 2011:

      Hey tpeng, great question, good to see you have looked at my profile 🙂
      So at the moment, we know that the heart get energy from fat and sugar. It gets 70% from fat and the rest from sugar. There seems to be a switch just after heart disease really shows it’s self. If you have a heart attack, the area around the scar changes the way it uses this fuel, so that it uses more sugar. For the heart this can be very damaging, as it wastes this sugar and doesn’t produce as much energy out of it. If we can figure out why the heart starts to use more sugar than fat, then scientist might be able to find drugs to stop this happening. If we can return the hearts use of fuel to normal, then doctors should be able to save people!

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