Still putting together my thoughts on Insulin but wanted to repeat what NPR reported this morning. Cesarean bith is now the #1 surgery performed. WoW what does that say about our "Health Care System"? More on Insulin later today

Glycemic index

I want to get more into the glycemic index. What is it? It is a physiological measurement of a carbohydrates quality, a gram for gram comparison based on their immediate affect on blood glucose levels. So you can compare how Wheaties breakfast cereal and broccoli affect your blood sugar. Individuals living the longest and healthiest lives all have one thing in common, they eat diets that produce lower/steadier blood sugar levels and thus maintain lower/steadier Insulin levels. So I am going to diverge from the GI discussion a bit to discuss the one thing that controls/initiates or plays a major part in chronic disease proceses, that would be Insulin or more correctly Insulin resistance. Insulin is a hormone that stores excess nutrients, first as Glycogen in muscles and the liver. These stores are small, less than an active days needs, so when they are full the storage is in the form of saturated fat, palmitic acid. Get the picture? So the idea of recommending a high complex-carbohydrate, low-saturated-fat diet is an absolute oxymoron. A high-complex-carbohydrate diet is nothing but a high-glucose diet, or a high-sugar diet. Your body is just going to store it as saturated fat, and the body makes it into saturated fat quite readily. Next article we will bounce between Insulin affects and the tricks of the GI.

I am back, sorry for missing last week. There are so many things I would like to talk about this morning. I will start with this weekend which I spent in class in ABQ. For the last two years now I have been working on an advanced practice certification, (The ability to perform injectable nutrition thru IM/IV), book work, testing, hands on.... In the state of NM Chiropractors can currently perform trigger point injection therapy using and herb called Sarapin and procain which I should be set up to offer at Agape latter this month. Latter this year we should have a full blood draw service and expand into the other nutrient injectables. There is a large pow wow for a final and much larger formulary approval from the Pharmacy board in June after that we will be offering much more as far as the injectable nutrients . So stay tuned for more updates on this wonderful service we will be able to offer.

Earlier this morning I was completing my work out routine on the Rom machine and there was a discussion on NPR about older men and muscle cramps (esp at night) and prostate problems. As far as the muscle cramps their answer was to see a neurologist and take a prescription drug. I was so frustrated, I immediately sent off an e-mail response about my concern of how they had just promoted fear, insurance and disease control and total lack of self responsibility. I have not seen a patient yet with muscle cramps that was either due to the problems with Statin drugs or a deficiency in the bodies mineral pool or both and very easily resolved by getting off the statins and making diet and supplementation changes.

Fructose, GI and mercury

I don't know how to do the link thing so I am cutting/pasting and dragging, there are three articles and I will include one each day so as to not make such a huge read. Here is the first:


#1

Sugar May Be Bad, But This Sweetener is Far More Deadly, Part 1 of 2

Posted by Dr. Mercola | January 02 2010 |

Scientists have proved for the first time that fructose, a cheap form of sugar used in thousands of food products and soft drinks, can damage human metabolism and is fueling the obesity crisis.

Fructose, a sweetener usually derived from corn, can cause dangerous growths of fat cells around vital organs and is able to trigger the early stages of diabetes and heart disease.

Over 10 weeks, 16 volunteers on a controlled diet including high levels of fructose produced new fat cells around their heart, liver and other digestive organs. They also showed signs of food-processing abnormalities linked to diabetes and heart disease. Another group of volunteers on the same diet, but with glucose sugar replacing fructose, did not have these problems.

Sources:

Grist December 15, 2009

J Clin Invest 2009

Times Online 2009

This study takes its place in a growing lineup of scientific studies demonstrating that consuming high-fructose corn syrup is the fastest way to trash your health. It is now known without a doubt that sugar in your food, in all it’s myriad of forms, is taking a devastating toll.

And fructose in any form -- including high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) and crystalline fructose -- is the worst of the worst!

Fructose is a major contributor to:

· Insulin resistance and obesity

· Elevated blood pressure

· Elevated triglycerides and elevated LDL

· Depletion of vitamins and minerals

· Cardiovascular disease, liver disease, cancer, arthritis and even gout

A Calorie is Not a Calorie

Glucose is the form of energy you were designed to run on. Every cell in your body, every bacterium -- and in fact, every living thing on the Earth--uses glucose for energy.

If you received your fructose only from vegetables and fruits (where it originates) as most people did a century ago, you’d consume about 15 grams per day -- a far cry from the 73 grams per day the typical adolescent gets from sweetened drinks. In vegetables and fruits, it’s mixed in with fiber, vitamins, minerals, enzymes, and beneficial phytonutrients, all which moderate any negative metabolic effects.

It isn’t that fructose itself is bad -- it is the MASSIVE DOSES you’re exposed to that make it dangerous.

There are two reasons fructose is so damaging:

1. Your body metabolizes fructose in a much different way than glucose. The entire burden of metabolizing fructose falls on your liver.

2. People are consuming fructose in enormous quantities, which has made the negative effects much more profound.

Today, 55 percent of sweeteners used in food and beverage manufacturing are made from corn, and the number one source of calories in America is soda, in the form of HFCS.

Food and beverage manufacturers began switching their sweeteners from sucrose (table sugar) to corn syrup in the 1970s when they discovered that HFCS was not only far cheaper to make, it’s about 20% sweeter than table sugar.

HFCS is either 42% or 55% fructose, and sucrose is 50% fructose, so it's really a wash in terms of sweetness.

Still, this switch drastically altered the average American diet.

By USDA estimates, about one-quarter of the calories consumed by the average American is in the form of added sugars, and most of that is HFCS. The average Westerner consumes a staggering 142 pounds a year of sugar! And the very products most people rely on to lose weight -- the low-fat diet foods -- are often the ones highest in fructose.

Making matters worse, all of the fiber has been removed from these processed foods, so there is essentially no nutritive value at all.

Fructose Metabolism Basics

Without getting into the very complex biochemistry of carbohydrate metabolism, it is important to understand some differences about how your body handles glucose versus fructose. I will be publishing a major article about this in the next couple of months, which will get much more into the details, but for our purpose here, I will just summarize the main points.

Dr. Robert Lustig[i] Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco, has been a pioneer in decoding sugar metabolism. His work has highlighted some major differences in how different sugars are broken down and used:

· After eating fructose, 100 percent of the metabolic burden rests on your liver. But with glucose, your liver has to break down only 20 percent.

· Every cell in your body, including your brain, utilizes glucose. Therefore, much of it is “burned up” immediately after you consume it. By contrast, fructose is turned into free fatty acids (FFAs), VLDL (the damaging form of cholesterol), and triglycerides, which get stored as fat.

· The fatty acids created during fructose metabolism accumulate as fat droplets in your liver and skeletal muscle tissues, causing insulin resistance and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Insulin resistance progresses to metabolic syndrome and type II diabetes.

· Fructose is the most lipophilic carbohydrate. In other words, fructose converts to activated glycerol (g-3-p), which is directly used to turn FFAs into triglycerides. The more g-3-p you have, the more fat you store. Glucose does not do this.

· When you eat 120 calories of glucose, less than one calorie is stored as fat. 120 calories of fructose results in 40 calories being stored as fat. Consuming fructose is essentially consuming fat!

· The metabolism of fructose by your liver creates a long list of waste products and toxins, including a large amount of uric acid, which drives up blood pressure and causes gout.

· Glucose suppresses the hunger hormone ghrelin and stimulates leptin, which suppresses your appetite. Fructose has no effect on ghrelin and interferes with your brain’s communication with leptin, resulting in overeating.

If anyone tries to tell you “sugar is sugar,” they are way behind the times. As you can see, there are major differences in how your body processes each one.

The bottom line is: fructose leads to increased belly fat, insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome -- not to mention the long list of chronic diseases that directly result.

Panic in the Corn Fields

As the truth comes out about HFCS, the Corn Refiners Association is scrambling to convince you that their product is equal to table sugar, that it is “natural” and safe.

Of course, many things are “natural” -- cocaine is natural, but you wouldn’t want to use 142 pounds of it each year.

The food and beverage industry doesn’t want you to realize how truly pervasive HFCS is in your diet -- not just from soft drinks and juices, but also in salad dressings and condiments and virtually every processed food. The introduction of HFCS into the Western diet in 1975 has been a multi-billion dollar boon for the corn industry.

The FDA classifies fructose as GRAS: Generally Regarded As Safe. Which pretty much means nothing and is based on nothing.

There is plenty of data showing that fructose is not safe -- but the effects on the nation’s health have not been immediate. That is why we are just now realizing the effects of the last three decades of nutritional misinformation.

As if the negative metabolic effects are not enough, there are other issues with fructose that disprove its safety:

· More than one study has detected unsafe mercury levels in HFCS[ii].

· Crystalline fructose (a super-potent form of fructose the food and beverage industry is now using) may contain arsenic, lead, chloride and heavy metals.

· Nearly all corn syrup is made from genetically modified corn, which comes with its own set of risks.

The FDA isn’t going to touch sugar, so it’s up to you to be proactive about your own dietary choices.

What’s a Sugarholic to Do?

Ideally, I recommend that you avoid as much sugar as possible. This is especially important if you are overweight or have diabetes, high cholesterol, or high blood pressure.

I also realize we don’t live in a perfect world, and following rigid dietary guidelines is not always practical or even possible.

If you want to use a sweetener occasionally, this is what I recommend:

1. Use the herb stevia.

2. Use organic cane sugar in moderation.

3. Use organic raw honey in moderation.

4. Avoid ALL artificial sweeteners, which can damage your health even more quickly than fructose.

5. Avoid agave syrup since it is a highly processed sap that is almost all fructose. Your blood sugar will spike just as it would if you were consuming regular sugar or HFCS. Agave’s meteoric rise in popularity is due to a great marketing campaign, but any health benefits present in the original agave plant are processed out.

6. Avoid so-called energy drinks and sports drinks because they are loaded with sugar, sodium and chemical additives. Rehydrating with pure, fresh water is a better choice.

If you or your child is involved in athletics, I recommend you read my article Energy Rules for some great tips on how to optimize your child’s energy levels and physical performance through good nutrition.

---

[i] Robert H. Lustig, MD: UCSF Faculty Bio Page, and YouTube presentation “Sugar: The bitter truth” and “The fructose epidemic” The Bariatrician, 2009, Volume 24, No. 1, page 10)

[ii] “Why is the FDA unwilling to study evidence of mercury in high-fructose corn syrup?” 20 Feb 2009, Grist

Back to artificial sweeteners

Lets take a break from learning about Glycemic Index and return to the info I posted on March 1st. That article pointed out how calorie reducing artificial sweeteners actually will cause you to gain weight and now here is another article saying the same thing, but this one is specifically talking about Sucralose or "Slenda". These findings are incredible, and what is even more incredible is that this product is even still on the market. I will list the high points or should I say Low points:
1) “Splenda is comprised of the high-potency artificial sweetener sucralose and
the fillers maltodextrin and glucose.”

2) The US FDA Acceptable Daily Intake for sucralose is 5 mg/kg body weight.

3) In this study, a 12-wk administration of Splenda to mice in human dose
equivalents exerted numerous adverse effects, including:
A)) Reduction in beneficial fecal microflora
B)) Increased fecal pH
C)) Enhanced expression genes which reduce the absorption of orally
administered drugs.

4) The artificial high-potency sweetening compound sucralose is a chlorinated
disaccharide.

5) “Sucralose is ubiquitous in the world food supply as an ingredient in over
4000 products, including tabletop sweeteners and sugar substitutes (e.g., Splenda),
baked goods, beverages such as soft drinks, coffee and tea, breakfast cereals,
chewing gum, desserts, and pharmaceutical products.”

6) Sucralose is a chlorinated hydrocarbon, an organochlorine molecule.

7) Adverse consequences from the elevated presence of sucralose have been
reported in animal models, which included gastrointestinal tract DNA damage.

8) Unabsorbed sucralose in the gut affects the intestinal microbial milieu.
Gut microflora carry out many important functions, including:
A)) Fermentation of dietary carbohydrates,
B)) Salvage of energy as short-chain fatty acids
C)) Production of vitamins
D)) Maintenance of normal immune system functioning
E)) Gastrointestinal tract mobility
F)) Inhibition of pathogens
G)) Metabolism of drugs

9) The lowest Splenda dose showed a significant increase in body weight gain
during and after Splenda supplementation. [Very Ironic]

10) “At the end of the 12-wk treatment with Splenda, numerous alterations were
observed that did not occur in control animals, including lymphocytic infiltrates into
epithelium, epithelial scarring, mild depletion of goblet cells, glandular
disorganization, and focally dilated vessels stuffed with intravascular lymphocytes.”

11) The intake of Splenda for 12-wks exerted several adverse effects on the
intestines of these rats, including a significant decrease in beneficial intestinal
bacteria, elevated fecal pH, histopathological changes in the colon, and increased
body weight.

12) “Disruption in the number and state of balance of intestinal microflora may
potentially interfere with many essential gut functions, including nutrient
metabolism, normal immune system functioning, gastrointestinal mobility, inhibition
of pathogens, vitamin synthesis (B group and K), and metabolism of drugs.”

13) Sucralose ingestion “might have clinical significance for humans in the
management of many medical conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome,
inflammatory bowel disease, cardiovascular disease, obesity, and cancer, in which
gut flora play an important role.”

14) Splenda suppresses beneficial bacteria and directly interferes with the
bioavailability of drugs and nutrients at doses that are approved by the FDA for use
in the food supply.

more on the glycemic index

Let's look at the "white lie" if you will over white or wheat bread. Eat a slice and prick your finger for a glucose test and you will see both raise it the same (wonder white has a GI of 80, whole wheat is 77) and they both contain glutin which the majority of the population gets an inflammatory gut response from. It is not a healthy food white or wheat. There is something to be said about sprouted grain breads, the kernel is placed in an environment which promotes growth and now the large amount of white endosperm is converted to a protein to support that growth. So the bread made from this is much healthier. Bottom line is that if it is made from a flour especially wheat it is not a healthy food. The same info applies whether we are talking about a hamburger bun, a tortilla or an english muffin.....

more on the glycemic index

So I posted a new study that looks at how a low glycemic breakfast affects your fat burning ability. Breakfast sets the tone of blood sugar, blood pressure, hormone production..... and the breakfast foods we have been typically marketed are not Low Glycemic (cereals, breads, pancakes....all made up from flours). Breakfast should be looked at the same as any other meal; Balanced in Fat, protein and veggies. Use Steel cut oates and quinoa for your ceareals, plain full fat yogurt with fresh berries, a whey protein shake with fresh berries and almonds a cruciferous veggie packed frittata.

Glycemic Index

I just posted and article from The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, connecting high GI/GL as causal or increasing risk in all the major chronic diseases (Diabetes, heart, cancer....). So what is Glycemci index GI? It is a measure of the glucose response in your body after consuming carbohydrates. The lower the number the less response, so less glucose being dumped into the blood and less Insulin/leptin of which all three play a direct pathogenic role in the disease process. Here are a few examples: white bread 70, whole wheat bread 77, fructose 19, almonds 0, total breakfast cereal 76, broccoli 0. So what you find is that whole foods have much lower values than processed foods and there are a few twists. Take Agave, used as a sweetener because it has such a low GI, well the reason is because it is mostly fructose. So you might want to revisit the blog a few days back where I talked about HFCS, F or fructose is the culprit. It is processed differently than most carbs and it basicly goes directly to the liver where it is converted to a triglyceride (fatty sugar). So it is not bad as far as raising glucose/insuli/leptin but it is killing your liver just like an alcoholic. Questions so far?

Artificial sweateners

I posted the abstract and "key Points" from a very interesting study for discussion on today's blog. It seems that are brain/body are preprogrammed to know that there should be a certain number of calories with each level of sweetness in our food. So when Dean eats or drinks something sweet my brain/body says " hey there should be a lot of calories with this so slow down, not too much chubs" and then I go and start using artificial sweetners to reduce the calories in an attempt to loose weight or just not get any bigger. Well it looks like our brain/body has figured out what we have done and it is in charge and says I need more calories , so we eat more and ultimately gain even more weight than before the start of artificial sweeteners. So what is the answer " Whole foods" get back to eating whole foods, preferably without real sugar, definitely with out artificial sweeteners and definitely without HFCS. There are some good studies that say if you get the correct balance of protein/fat/carbs at each meal for your unique body you will eliminate your brain/body sugar cravings. What do you think?

P.S. I think even the great stevia falls into this category.