From cancer to Alzheimer’s: could a renewed focus on energy transform biomedicine?, 2026, Martin Picard

[Mij]

Including energy dynamics in research could improve our understanding of diseases and of the healing processes that sustain health.

An energetic lens on biomedicine

Some simple questions can help scientists to consider their system of study in terms of the energy trade-offs that might be involved. Here are five examples.

• What are the energy costs of this function or disease?

• Which other processes are simultaneously competing for the finite energy budget?

• Could this trait be driven by energy constraints or trade-offs?

• How much energy do the side effects of this treatment cost?

• What patient behaviours might compete with the energetic costs of healing?

Similarly, energy constraints might explain why a group of Shuar Amazonian children who were exposed to viral and parasitic pathogens throughout childhood experienced stunted growth. . Having one’s immune system activated constantly over years might require that less energy is expended on processes associated with optimal growth.

Moreover, when a person’s immune system is activated by a virus, they might feel ill, want to stay at home rather than socialize and experience low moods temporarily. The immune system is consuming extra energy to fight off the virus, potentially stealing energy from other body functions — a phenomenon well described in animal models.

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

This seems to be re-inventing a wheel from the studies of the 1940s and 1950s and without much insight. The article linked contains lots of very doubtful claims about energy and rest.

I think that thinking about ME/CFS would do well to move away from energy completely.

 

[Mij]

Could this have some relationship that develops in gradual ME onset in teenage years?

 

[ScoutB]

If there is a meaningful energy limit, seems like it's got to be one *imposed* (in some complicated way) by the body/brain, and that it would be more conservative than the actual physical/chemical energy limit (I think others have said this before).

The concept of 'constrained total energy expenditure' (the hypothesis that as we exercise more, we automatically spend less energy in other areas) seems possibly relevant. I could imagine that if it exists, it's lower in ME/CFS. But whenever I look into it, it seems like research has basically gotten as far as noting that exercising a lot doesn't lead to burning as many more calories overall as we would expect, and then a bunch of speculation about what other systems could be cutting back on energy-use to compensate.