Healthy Andy

Remember when everyone told you that eating fatty foods was going to give you high cholesterol?  Turns out, the story may be more complex than that.  Recent research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that the higher your intake of sugar, the worse off your cholesterol levels are. 

This is actually a really interesting article on a couple of levels.  First off, let’s just talk about the cholesterol thing.

It’s kind of a big deal that somebody bothered to check this out, because as I mentioned before, for a long time the assumption was that eating foods high in cholesterol makes your blood cholesterol levels higher.  In this study, researchers questioned over 6,000 people on what they ate and then used that information to estimate sugar intake.

Blood samples were also drawn from all of the subjects, and the researchers found that with increasing sugar intake, the blood profiles got worse. Specifically, low sugar intake correlated with lower LDL (bad cholesterol) levels, lower triglycerides (this is also bad stuff) and higher HDL (good cholesterol).  So low sugar intake= better cholesterol and triglyceride levels. Interestingly (to me, at least) this correlation was strongest for HDL levels (again, that’s the good cholesterol).

There’s some potential confounding variables (big words for “a monkey wrench”) in this study.  For starters, if you’ve read any of my other posts concerning scientific studies, you know my stance on the dubious nature of self-report.  Simply put, PEOPLE LIE.  They fib about everything.  In fact, they even lie to themselves, when there’s nobody else looking!

Self-report is simply very, very unreliable.  Even if someone isn’t lying, they may over or underestimate whatever you’re asking them about.  So it would’ve been better to have these participants fill out a food diary as they actually ate throughout the course of a week (or whatever time frame you like).  That way you know they aren’t under or overestimating by trying to remember just what they ate last week. 

Try that out yourself, by the way.  Think back over what you ate last week.  I’ll bet you forget at least something.  Even harder would be to remember portion size.  So filling out a food diary would’ve been better (but logistically harder to do).  Of course, you still would have the problem of people lying on their self-report, but there isn’t much you can do about that, unless you’re planning on forming some sort of Food Self-Report Justice League (if you do, I’ll join if there’s a cool badge involved).

Anywho, the point is, self-report is a problem. But, considering the typical tendency of an individual is to UNDERestimate sugar intake… or really, underestimate any sort of unhealthy behavior (people hate to admit just how bad their diet is), then the problem of self-report isn’t as bad.  In fact, it may lead to the researchers underestimating just how important sugar intake is… in other words, the effect of sugar on cholesterol may be even GREATER than they measured. 

So, I’m willing to accept their findings as valid.  But there’s actually some more interesting facts that the researchers found out that I don’t think they planned on finding.

Namely, this: almost TWENTY PERCENT of the subjects were getting at least a quarter of their daily calories from sugar.  Not “carbohydrates”, SUGAR.  That’s almost 50 teaspoons of sugar a day.  Hang on.  Let me do some googling and calculating here.

Okay, I’m back. Fifty teaspoons of sugar translates to about eight ounces, or ONE FULL CUP of sugar!  EVERY DAY!

Gee, I wonder why we’re all so freakin’ fat?

One more reason to cut out the sugar, folks.  Start switching over to a whole foods diet and stay healthy!

Source: http://edition.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/04/20/added.sugar.lipids/

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!

Learning how to avoid osteoporosis is a huge concern for a large part of the population, and for good reason… our bones protect our vital organs and provide the structural support that lets our muscles move us around.  We take our bones for granted; it seems like the muscles get all the press.  Muscles are obviously dynamic, and change rapidly and visibly in response to training.

For that reason, some people think of bone as sort of a blah, inert substance that’s little more than organic concrete.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Bone is living, vibrant tissue, which is absolutely central to our health as a whole.  It’s more than just a framework.  Among other things, bones act as a factory for all kinds of blood cells and also as a backup repository for calcium.

Most people think of calcium as something they need just to keep their bones strong.  Wrong.  Calcium is used by the body for all kinds of activities… muscular contraction, proper function of nerves, and creating the electrical signals used by the heart.  So, yeah, kind of important stuff.

That’s why your body is willing to pull calcium out of the bones if your blood levels get a little low.  It’s more important to keep your heart beating than to have strong bones.  So if we want to avoid osteoporosis (weakening of the bones), a big way to do that is to avoid losing the calcium in the first place.

How?  Well, the best way is to look at why the body loses calcium.  Sure, if your dietary intake of calcium is low, you’ll lose some there.  But there are far more dramatic sources of calcium loss in the body.

In a word, sugar. 

Yep, our old nemesis is back again and ready to party.  Among all the other horrible effects that sugar has on the body, refined sugar will dramatically increase the amount of calcium lost in the urine.  Which, in turn, drops the levels of calcium in the blood, and your body will respond by pulling calcium out of the bones to keep this vital element at a normal level in your bloodstream.

Soda, in particular, seems to just plain suck the calcium right out of you, so step one in avoiding osteoporosis is to cut out the sugar, including sugary drinks. This is more important than supplementation, in my opinion.  Your body can only take in so much calcium at a time (it’s just a tough nutrient to absorb), and you can lose it much faster than you can put it back.  So one more reason to cut out the sugar.

Weight bearing exercise is just as important.  Remember, bone is ALIVE.  It’s actually super-amazing stuff; it’s tough and resilient but also just flexible enough so that it gives a bit under sudden strain (which makes it less likely to break). 

It also RESPONDS.  Just like your muscles respond to stress by becoming stronger, your bones will also respond to physical stress by strengthening.  The reverse is also true:  just like your muscles will atrophy (shrink up and get weak) with disuse, your bones will weaken if you don’t put them under stress consistently.

So, make sure you’re exercising and stressing those bones.  The more weight-bearing an exercise is, the better… that doesn’t mean you have to be a power-lifter, but yes, even the elderly should be doing some resistance training.

Lastly, there’s supplements.  The main thing to know about calcium supplementation is this:  you need to be taking vitamin D and magnesium along with it.  A good supplement will include them, as they’re necessary co-factors for your body to absorb and actually use the calcium. 

Also, don’t bother taking more than 500 mg of calcium at a time.  Your body reaches saturation around 400-500 mg, and the rest will just pass through unused.  If you need to take more than 500 mg a day, split the doses up throughout the day.

But don’t neglect the big picture, folks!  Taking a supplement is fine, but avoiding sugar and adding in weight-bearing exericse is the main way to avoid osteoporosis and keep your bone health at a maximum!

Two recent studies show that whether you know it or not, you’re an addict, and your poison is sugar.

The first study is one in which rats were allowed a choice between cocaine and sugar water, and choose the sugar water over the cocaine- even if they were cokehead rats.  Pretty scary.

The second, more recent study published in Nature Neuroscience, shows that the same chemical changes in the brain occur with junk food eating as with drug abuse.  Namely, that the pleasure centers of the brain get overloaded, and you need more and more of the “fix” to just feel like you’re not sliding backwards.

I tell my patients about this all time.  The nervous system has a quality called “accomodation”, meaning, it gets used to stuff.  Stick your hand in a hot bucket of water, and eventually, it won’t feel hot anymore… even if the water is still hot.  Your nerves will change their thermostat, so to speak, to account for this higher stimulus.

So, if you’re constantly bombarding your body with a free-base version of sugar intake, you guessed it, you too will get accustomed to that super-sweet taste.  Soon, even normal tasting stuff will taste bland by comparison.

But these studies suggest something further.  Your body releases chemicals in the brain to make you feel good- that’s how you get runner’s high and stuff like that- and these studies are saying that sugary foods feed into that pathway just like drugs such as cocaine and heroin.  And just like a heroin addict, if you don’t get your artificially inflated “fix” of feel-good chemicals, you will start feeling horrible by comparison.  Remember, you’re not craving sugar because you need sugar.  You’re craving sugar because your feel-good chemicals have returned to normal levels… and because you’re used to an artificially jacked-up level of feel-good chemicals, by comparison, you feel like you’re missing something or need something to make you feel better.

Pretty crazy, hunh?  But as one MD who commented on these articles put it, we bascially do the same thing to our food as we do to cocaine.  Cocaine in its natural state is a green leaf that is chewed on slowly by the natives, and used like that, it acts kind of like coffee.  No big deal.  Then the modern world came along, said “Hey!  We can make THAT better!”, and refined cocaine into a super-powerful substance that directly and massively stimulates the pleasure centers of the brain.

In the case of food, we take a normal, natural, healthy substance, and refine and process it until everything healthy has been stripped out of it and we’re left with a highly concentrated product that, like cocaine, also directly stimulates our brains in a way that it was never meant to handle.  Awesome.  The more things change, the more they stay the same.

So, yet one more reason why you should do your best to switch to an unprocessed, whole foods diet ASAP.  And, another reason why you should, just as I suggest in my book, do it by slow degrees.  Because really, you’re a recovering addict.  You just didn’t know it.