Healthy Andy

Maybe the title of this post should be about how SUGAR makes you fat, not insulin, but hey, we’re not looking to point fingers here.  I’m just looking to fill you in on the mechanism of insulin and weight gain, and how those high glycemic index carbs make you fat.

So the first thing that happens is, you eat a big ol’ pile of sugar.  Or bread, or whatever other carbs of choice you want to blame for that bulge in your belly.  Since refined carbohydrates have very little fiber, or filler material, that sugar very very rapidly gets digested and assimilated into your bloodstream.  Unrefined carbs, of course, have a much more muted effect, but with refined carbs you’re basically mainlining sugar.

The immediate effect of this is to dramatically spike the level of sugar circulating in your bloodstream.  As a consequence, your body then releases a massive surge of insulin, which is the hormone the body uses to clear sugar out of the bloodstream.  The more sugar in the blood, the more insulin gets released.

Here’s where we run into the first problem.  High levels of insulin signal the body to store and keep fat.  You’ve essentially just shouted at your stomach, STAY FAT, NO MATTER WHAT.  This holds true regardless of caloric intake.  In the presence of high levels of insulin, your body will not burn fat- instead, it will start to break down muscle and burn that instead. 

You may have encountered this already.  Ever starve yourself like crazy trying to lose weight, and nothing happens?  You were probably eating refined carbs of some sort (when you did eat), and therefore signalled your body to hang on to that fat for dear life.  You probably got sluggish and cranky, but not thin.

There’s more.  Insulin is an antagonist to Human Growth Hormone (HGH) and glucagon, another hormone.  What’s an antagonist?  What it sounds like… it essentially means that insulin blocks or inactivates HGH and glucagon.

So, why should you care?  Well, glucagon is a hormone that tells your body to burn off fat, so I bet you care about THAT.  And HGH not only tells your body to burn fat, it also tells the body to put on lean muscle mass (which increases metabolism and therefore burns off even more fat).

If it sounds like a double whammy, it is.  Insulin itself makes you store fat, and shuts down the hormones that tell you to burn if off.  Bummer, right?

I’m not finished.  Insulin also makes you hungry.  You see, as your blood sugar spikes, your body over-reacts and dumps tons of insulin into your system, which does its job and clears out all of the blood sugar.

As in, ALL of the blood sugar.  So after you spike your blood sugar up, it comes crashing back down.  This is why, after you binge on carbs, you get that sugar rush followed by a huge crash of energy… and a desire for more carbs.  As your blood sugar drops, your energy levels drop along with it.  And, as your body senses a dramatically low level of blood sugar, it gets desperate for exactly that… more sugar.

Kind of a mess, isn’t it?  Plus, refined carbs don’t have any of the fiber to tell your stomach to feel full, so you gobble down tons of the stuff and still feel like eating.  So, let’s sum up:

• You eat a ton of calories but don’t feel full.
• You spike your insulin levels and tell yourself to stay fat.
• You deactivate the hormones that tell your body to burn fat.
• You have a huge energy crash coupled with a fierce desire for more carbs.

Practically makes you think that sugar should be illegal, doesn’t it?  But remember, ANY refined carbohydrates are going to have this effect.  The higher the glycemic index (how sugary the food is), the worse the effect (i.e, the greater the insulin and greater the weight gain).  Quantity of carbs consumed is another obvious factor.

Is it any wonder why I tell people to avoid this stuff?  Refined carbs are practically poison, my friends. As an extra added bonus, there’s some research suggesting spiking insulin levels are a contributing factor to aging. Remember I said it deactivates HGH?  HGH is the hormone that keeps us young (just ask Sylvestor Stallone, he got caught going into Australia with about a million vials of the stuff).

Switch over to a whole foods diet, avoid the carbs, and stay thin and young.  It’s just that simple.

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Stay healthy!

Constantly… and I mean CONSTANTLY… I get asked what kinds of supplements people should take in order to lose weight.  Sometimes I’m a smart-ass and say “an apple”, but in all seriousness, I get it.  You all want to be able to take something to make yourself a little lighter in the middle.

First off, I make that smart-alecky answer, “an apple”, for a reason.  There is no nutritional supplement that can possibly make the same level of difference in your waistline as having healthy diet and exercise habits.  I hammer on this point again and again, because it’s the simple truth.  I don’t want you swallowing a pill and expecting miracles.  There are no magic beans, or secret elixirs, that will let you eat fifteen birthday cakes a day while lying on the couch, and still stay thin.  Doesn’t exist.  Never will.

You gain or lose weight due to physics and biochemistry. So first, fix the diet and exercise habits.  Then, if you think you need a little extra, you follow the same rules for weight loss supplements as you do for any other supplements… what’s something that will increase my health (something missing that my body normally needs), that I can safely take for a lifetime?

Oh, sure, there’s crap out there you can take like Ephedra or medications that will make your heart go pitter-pat super fast.  But you might as well just smoke a bunch of crystal meth to lose weight.  That stuff is horrible, HORRIBLE for you, and frankly, no, you can’t take those kinds of supplements for a lifetime.  If you try, your lifetime will end up being a lot shorter than you’d like.

Listen.  You’re not overweight because your body is low on Ephedra or other stimulants.  You’re not replacing something your body actually uses normally.  And I don’t want to see any of you keeling over dead of a heart attack in your thirties because you wanted a quick fix. 

Okay, okay, okay, Healthy Andy, you’re all saying.  We get it.  No thinly-disguised crystal meth.  We replace something our body normally needs, that we aren’t getting enough of, that promotes a healthy weight.  What is it, already?

Fish oils.  Or, Omega-3 fatty acids, really.  I know, it sounds weird, that the best possible weight loss product is fish oils, but stick with me, and I’ll show you why.

Omega-3 fats belong to a class of fats called Essential Fatty Acids(EFAs), which are called that because your body can’t make them.  You have to get them in your diet.  And, most people are deficient in them.  So, they fit our classification of a healthy supplement that you can take for a lifetime… your body needs it for everyday use, and you probably are low in them.

Right, but what do they do when it comes to weight loss?  Well, the two main ways that fish oils will help you fit into your skinny jeans are first, helping reduce inflammation, and second, improving sugar metabolism.

Let’s start with the first one.  Inflammation.  I’ve posted before about how chronic inflammation throughout the body is a component of all kinds of dread diseases that plague our society.  Obesity is only one of them. 

Here’s how it works.  The inflammatory process encourages the release of a substance called cortisol, a stress hormone. In short doses, cortisol is fine… in fact, it actually does helpful stuff for you.  But there’s something about long-term, chronic cortisol release that causes the body to retain fat.  I mean, retain it no matter what, regardless of whether you’re starving yourself on a low-calorie diet or not.  Rather than burn off fat, your body will consume muscle tissue or even just plain slow your metabolism to a crawl.

So, less inflammation means less cortisol, which removes a potential barrier to losing fat.  It won’t burn off calories all by itself; what it does is allows your diet and exercise program to actually work like it should.  If you’re one of those people frustrated because your diet and exercise habits are where they need to be, but you still can’t seem to shake off the muffin tops or love handles, it may be because of cortisol.

The other part of the fish oil-weight loss equation is an improvement in sugar metabolism.  Here’s what that means.  When you eat food, afterwards, there’s sugar floating around in your bloodstream.  Your body will use a chemical called insulin to pull that sugar out of the blood and put it into the cell, where it can be burned immediately for energy or stored for later use (that’s called glycogen and it’s in the muscle tissue, we’re not talking about fat here).

Omega-3s like fish oil are an important part of this equation.  The simplest way to explain it is, Omega-3s help to “anchor” the gate that insulin and sugar travel through in order to get into the cell.

You see, your cell has a wall around it to keep all the right stuff in and all the wrong stuff out.  There’s doorways or gates scattered all across the surface, so that the cell can (basically) get deliveries and take out the trash.  Each gate is locked so that no thieves can break in, which is nice, and these gates get unlocked by a doorman who escorts the delivery into the cell.  Each specific gate has a different doorman for a different kind of delivery.

When sugar is delivered to the cell, the doorman in question is insulin.  Insulin knocks on the door, says “open up”, and lets sugar in.  That gate is held in place (kind of) by Omega-3 fats.  So, if you’re deficient in Omega-3s, the gate isn’t going to open up as it should, and sugar won’t be able to get in, but will keep circulating around and causing all kinds of problems. 

This process ends up leading to insulin levels going haywire in the bloodstream- spiking up, dropping down, and generally not working right.  Those wild insulin swings end up having a similar effect to cortisol in promoting the storage and retention of body fat.  You can think of it as the doorman getting frustrated and telling the sugar to just shut up and go live in a fat cell.

So, enough Omega-3s means the gate works right, opens right up when the doorman knocks, and therefore, sugar is cleared from the bloodstream right on schedule.  Everybody’s happy, and insulin levels stay in a normal range so that your body doesn’t prioritize the storage of fat, and you get to lose weight just like you should.  Practically a story-book ending.

There’s another possible mechanism for Omega-3s and fat loss that I’ll mention breifly.  Some animal studies are showing that Omega-3s directly stimulate the genes that control fat metabolism, like a fat burning on/off switch.  This hasn’t been verified in humans, but it’s definitely worth being aware of. 

There’s all kinds of other health benefits that go along with Omega-3s, of course, which is why fish oils are my favorite weight loss supplement.  You need them to make your body work right.  When your body works right, you lose weight.  You can (and should) take them for a lifetime, and not only are there no ill side effects, there’s tons of beneficial side effects.

So skip the quick-fix Ephedra/crystal meth crap, and reach for something that will help keep you fit and healthy for a lifetime- Omega-3s.

If you liked this article, tell your friends about HealthyAndy.com!  It will help you lose weight!  Okay, that’s a lie.  But it will make me happy.  As always, any questions or comments, please feel free to post them below.

Stay healthy!

Antioxidant Information Week rolls on!  Today, it’s a video describing how taking the acai berry, a popular antioxidant supplement often promoted for weight loss,  actually works as far as fat loss is concerned.  Really, it’s not just the acai berry, it’s any highly potent antioxidant of the polyphenol type, but I singled out acai because lots of people ask about it.

I sure hope you read yesterday’s post on antioxidants and inflammation, because our old friend NF-kB is back and causing more problems in our lives!  If not, well, I still explain how it all works, but you might want to check out yesterday’s post when you’re done watching the video for a little more insight on how inflammation is triggered in the body… and how antioxidants help.

So, antioxidants aren’t going to make us lose weight all by themselves, but they will help remove a significant block to losing weight- cortisol.  Don’t discount the importance of this.  We’re surrounded by all kinds of industrial toxins dumped into our water and air, pesticides and other chemicals added to our foods, and all kinds of crap we haven’t even discovered yet.  All of those chemical stressors activate the inflammatory cascade, leading to cortisol and therefore more fat (even if you’re low on calories!).

Let me put it to you this way.  How many of you out there DON’T think  your life is stressful?

Right.  So better help yourself out a bit.

So, one more point in the Win column for antioxidants.  Any questions or comments, please feel free to add them below, and if you found this article helpful, spread the word throughout the land via facebook, twitter, or just plain old telling your friends face-to-face about Healthy Andy!

Thanks for stopping by and stay healthy!

Science marches on.  In yet another stunning display of well-meaning stupidity, now scientists are trying to activate brown fat in adults so they can burn off calories more easily.

Let me explain.  Brown fat is something that you usually find only in babies; it’s different from white fat, which is basically regular fat, in that brown fat will generate heat (and therefore burn calories).  That’s why babies have it- it helps keep them warm until they’re developed enough to regulate their own heat more effectively.

So, the “genius” idea is, to stimulate the tiny bits of brown fat remnants left over in the adult body, to try to burn off calories and help people lose weight.  The way they want to do this, is to mess with the COX-2 enzyme in the body, which does all kinds of stuff like regulate inflammation.

Riiiiiiight.  Because it’s always a fantastic idea to mess around with people’s biochemistry, in order to try to make people lose weight without actually having to keep a healthy diet and exercise program.

It’s always something.  Some goofy quick-fix idea.  A while back it was Phen-Fen, Redux… basically legal crystal meth.  Then, when people started dropping dead from those medications (shocking!), Ephedra started becoming popular.  Or how about Olestra, that “fake fat” that was supposed to let you eat all the potato chips you wanted, because you couldn’t metabolize the fat!  It’s practically guilt- free calories!  Hurray!

Except, of course, for the orangish oily anal leakage that it caused.  But hey… easy weight loss!

Call me crazy, but I have a sinking feeling that manipulating critical enzymes with the intent of trying to re-activate tissue that has purposefully been lying dormant SINCE WE WERE INFANTS might… just might… be a bad idea.  Maybe it’s just the alarmist in me, but that course of action just MIGHT have unintended consequences.

Oh yes.  The last time we messed around with the COX-2 enzyme, it was called Celebrex.  Last I heard, a bunch of people started dropping dead of heart issues from taking that stuff…but hey!  It’ll be different this time!  Right?

Sure.  Or maybe you should just do it the old-fashioned way, by changing your diet and exercise habits from fatness habits, to fitness habits.  There is no quick fix, folks.  Stop chasing them.  Go back to the fundamentals, and train yourself to eat right and move.

Or end up a lab rat for the latest nitwit who thinks he’s outsmarted the human body.  Your choice.

Source:   http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1987987,00.html?xid=rss-health&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+time%2Fscienceandhealth+%28TIME%3A+Top+Science+and+Health+Stories%29