How Calories from Sugar/simple carbs, are different than calories from other food.

[sos007]

Most adult males require about 2,500 calories to maintain body weight. Most doctors will tell you that maintaining body weight is about calories in and calories out, regardless of caloric source.

3 teaspoons of sugar and one apple are calorically equal – about 50 calories.

Theoretically, if you ate 2,500 calories of sugar every day, and nothing else, you should be able to maintain your body weight – right?;

To answer this, we must know if caloric consumption, regardless of source, has the same impact on the body.

The answer is ‘no’. Here’s why:

•Ancestrally, humans had access to fructose (sugar is comprised of one molecule of glucose and one molecule of fructose), only in the late summer or autumn when fruits ripened on bushes or fell to the ground from trees;

oThis was critical to survival as food became scarce during winter, and humans would have to endure long periods of fasting between meals or even outright famines;

oFructose signals the body to store energy in the form of fat – visceral fat (around the liver and other internal organs) first, and then sub-cutaneous fat (beneath the skin); This fat was used during periods of famine for survival; The body converts stored fat into ‘glucose’ from ketone bodies in the fatty acids; The body’s metabolism functions on glucose – it is essential for survival. Even during famine and periods of fasting, the body can synthesize glucose from its own tissue – known as gluconeogenesis, even after glycogen stores from muscle tissue have been depleted.

oSo while fruits contain many nutrients that are essential to life, they must be consumed in small quantities, to avoid ‘fat-storage’.

oFruits, when eaten in their original form, not pureed or juiced, contain fiber, which slows the rate of their metabolism, and minimizes blood-glucose spikes. It is the increase in blood glucose and fructose that triggers the pancreas to release the hormone insulin to remove, and store, excess levels of fructose and glucose. Over-taxing the pancreas for an extended time frame diminishes the pancreas’ beta cells, which are responsible for the insulin production. This is how type 2 diabetes develops – extended over-consumption of glucose and fructose-spiking foods. In time, if sufficiently severe, the pancreas’ cells malfunction and mutate which can result in…pancreatic cancer.

oSimple carbohydrate forms of food such as white flour products (bread, pizza dough, pasta), as well as white potatoes, white rice, and ultra-processed foods (packaged foods) including breakfast cereals, chips, pretzels, crackers, soft-drinks, fruit juices and even milk (lactose is milk-sugar), all serve to increase blood glucose and fructose levels; Fermented fruits and grains, i.e. alcohol – does the same thing;

oTherefore, using simple carbohydrate foods as a fuel source – is a mechanism for storing energy and therefore visceral fat – leading to weight gain from increased body fat storage. This occurs even in an isocaloric comparison to the consumption of fat, protein and complex carbohydrates; Note visceral fat also causes greater oxidization of surrounding organ tissue increasing the risk of cell mutation – cancer;

oDue to the pancreas’ response to increased blood glucose, insulin is released within a short time frame to clear it from the blood stream, which results in a drop-off of energy levels. This is why after people consume simple carbohydrates, they experience a burst of energy for a short time, followed quickly by a collapse of energy resulting in drowsiness and desire to sleep – sound familiar?

•That’s not all sugar/fructose does – in order to be able to store more and more energy, it shuts off the hormone ‘leptin’ which regulates your satiety – your feeling of fullness. As a result, those whose primary fuel source is primarily simple carbohydrates, cannot satisfy their hunger during meals and end up over-eating, contributing to greater fat storage and weight gain. Ever wonder why bars and restaurants always offer you a drink before your meal? That’s why – it increases your desire to eat. This is why fast-food outlets provide free refills of soft-drinks – serve yourself – more and more sugar = more food sales;

•To top it all off – sugar/simple carbohydrate foods, trigger your dopamine receptors in your brain – the feel-good hormone. Who doesn’t like feeling good right? One good hit deserves another – dopamine receptors that are over-stimulated, down-regulate (become desensitized) resulting in the need for greater amounts of sugar/simple carbs to get the same level of pleasure. This builds what is known as ‘tolerance’ or addiction. Once you begin consuming simple carbohydrates as your primary fuel source, you become addicted and desensitized and require ever-increasing quantities of food to achieve the same dopamine levels. This is also how people become alcoholics or become addicted to drugs, porn, sex, or shopping – the desire for dopamine.

•When you become addicted, you rationalize your consumption requirement – which requires using illogical reasoning; for example ‘oh having sugar or dessert once a week is not unhealthy – everything in moderation right?’. Except, sugar and simple carbohydrates cannot be restricted voluntarily due to their propensity to encourage addiction. So the right amount of sugar is – no sugar. Would you justify having cocaine in moderation?

•Does that mean you can never eat bread, pizza, pasta, or rice? No. Have it less frequently, very small quantities, and always with a food that is made up of complex carbohydrates that will slow down the rate of metabolization. For example, hummus on pizza. Beans with rice. Beans with pasta. Rapini with pasta. Pasta should be the size of a small bird nest, smaller than your clenched fist, not a sprawling mound covering your entire plate. 2-3 forkfuls max. It should also be prepared al dente to slow down metabolism. The complex carb accompanying food should be equal or greater in quantity than the simple carb. Never to be consumed in the evening, ideally only at lunch. Evening meals should be a small amount of protein with lots of vegetables, no accompanying simple carbohydrates;

•Personally, I try and avoid simple carbs completely, it is ideal to do so. That said, I may have 2-3 small, home-made pizza squares (per week, NOT daily), but always at lunch and always with a thick layer of hummus.

•Brown or wild rice in small quantities (same as noted for pasta above) accompanied by legumes; and with lean protein – ideally fish mostly. Poultry and red-meat infrequently.

•You can also make pizza with spelt flour or whole grain flour – Whole Foods (grocery store in North America) makes ready-made pizza dough (all ingredients listed) in their deli section from ancient grains which are complex carbohydrates. Most neighbourhood Italian bakeries carry small amounts of whole-grain pizza dough (not as healthy as ancient grains but better than white flour).

•Packaged foods, salad dressings, and condiments are loaded with hidden forms of sugar (sugar has over 60 different chemical names), ketchup is 2/3 sugar. Therefore packaged food consumption should be zero, with few exceptions. Air-popped popcorn with either extra virgin olive oil or avocado oil is acceptable.

•Fermented foods are important for gut health. So cheese and plain 2% Greek yogurt, unflavoured, unsweetened – adding your own fruit and nuts is acceptable in small quantities daily.

To conclude – in an iso-caloric setting – eating foods of equivalent calories, will not result in the same healthy outcome, if one of the food choices include sugar and simple carbohydrates.

Legumes are complex carbohydrates and are also the highest form of vegetable protein, especially green peas. Nuts, and avocados are also healthy forms of fat.

As is cocoa in dark chocolate (I stick to 90-95% cocoa), Lindt Excellence bar.

Fueling your body mostly with healthy fats, creates energy from ketone bodies rather than glucose and fructose from simple carbohydrates. It also provides energy in a steady state form, so you avoid the peaks and valleys of energy associated with simple carbohydrate foods.

[sandybrown]

It is imperative that every one in this planet pull through from Corona virus! There are many people who are unable get seen by a doctor face to face to address life long health problem.

Take care.

[sos007 Ambassador in reply to sandybrown]

Having a strong immune system is the best way to deal with a virus. Eating right and exercising daily will help you to attain that.

[Red18 in reply to sos007]

Agree totally. Food is your medicine 💊 . Thankyou once again for all your advice. Reading all your posts has helped me so much 👏

[sos007 Ambassador in reply to Red18]

My pleasure.

[ling]

"Evening meals should be a small amount of protein with lots of vegetables, no accompanying simple carbohydrates;"

What's the reason for this?

Thank you

[sos007 Ambassador in reply to ling]

Protein is essential for maintaining muscle mass, and vegetables help both in the digestion process through high levels of fiber, but are also a complex carbohydrate that do not spike blood sugar. Green leafy vegetables are also a vasodilator - nature's blood pressure reducer.

[ling in reply to sos007]

Any reason why no simple carbs at evening meal?

[sos007 Ambassador in reply to ling]

No simple carbs ever. They damage your blood vessels.

[ling in reply to sos007]

Here you go -

Heart Surgeon Speaks Out On What Really Causes Heart Disease

We physicians with all our training, knowledge and authority often acquire a

rather large ego that tends to make it difficult to admit we are wrong. So, here it is. I freely admit to being wrong. As a heart surgeon with 25 years experience, having performed over 5,000 open-heart surgeries, today is my day to right the wrong with medical and scientific fact.

I trained for many years with other prominent physicians labeled “opinion makers.” Bombarded with scientific literature, continually attending education seminars, we opinion makers insisted heart disease resulted from the simple fact of elevated blood cholesterol.

The only accepted therapy was prescribing medications to lower cholesterol and a diet that severely restricted fat intake. The latter of course we insisted would lower cholesterol and heart disease. Deviations from these recommendations were considered heresy and could quite possibly result in malpractice.

It Is Not Working!

These recommendations are no longer scientifically or morally defensible. The discovery a few years ago that inflammation in the artery wall is the real cause of heart disease is slowly

leading to a paradigm shift in how heart disease and other chronic ailments will be treated.

The long-established dietary recommendations have created epidemics of obesity and diabetes, the consequences of which dwarf any historical plague in terms of mortality, human

suffering and dire economic consequences.

Despite the fact that 25% of the population takes expensive statin medications and despite the fact we have reduced the fat content of our diets, more Americans will die this year of heart

disease than ever before.

Statistics from the American Heart Association show that 75 million Americans currently suffer from heart disease, 20 million have diabetes and 57 million have pre-diabetes. These disorders are affecting younger and younger people in greater numbers every year.

Simply stated, without inflammation being present in the body, there is no way that cholesterol would accumulate in the wall of the blood vessel and cause heart disease and strokes. Without inflammation, cholesterol would move freely throughout the body as nature intended. It is inflammation that causes cholesterol to become trapped.

Inflammation is not complicated -- it is quite simply your body's natural defence to a foreign invader such as a bacteria, toxin or virus. The cycle of inflammation is perfect in how it protects your body from these bacterial and viral invaders. However, if we chronically expose the body to injury by toxins or foods the human body was never designed to process,a

condition occurs called chronic inflammation. Chronic inflammation is just as harmful as acute inflammation is beneficial.

What thoughtful person would willfully expose himself repeatedly to foods or other substances that are known to cause injury to the body? Well, smokers perhaps, but at least

they made that choice willfully.

The rest of us have simply followed the recommended mainstream diet that is low in fat and high in polyunsaturated fats and carbohydrates, not knowing we were causing repeated injury to our blood vessels. This repeated injury creates chronic inflammation leading to heart disease, stroke, diabetes and obesity.

Let me repeat that: The injury and inflammation in our blood vessels is caused by the low fat diet recommended for years by mainstream medicine.

What are the biggest culprits of chronic inflammation? Quite simply, they are the overload of simple, highly processed carbohydrates (sugar, flour and all the products made from them)

and the excess consumption of omega-6 vegetable oils like soybean, corn and sunflower that are found in many processed foods.

Take a moment to visualize rubbing a stiff brush repeatedly over soft skin until it becomes quite red and nearly bleeding. you kept this up several times a day, every day for five years.

If you could tolerate this painful brushing, you would have a bleeding, swollen infected area that became worse with each repeated injury. This is a good way to visualize the inflammatory process that could be going on in your body right now.

Regardless of where the inflammatory process occurs, externally or internally, it is the same.

I have peered inside thousands upon thousands of arteries. A diseased artery looks as if someone took a brush and scrubbed repeatedly against its wall. Several times a day, every

day, the foods we eat create small injuries compounding into more injuries, causing the body to respond continuously and appropriately with inflammation.

While we savor the tantalizing taste of a sweet roll, our bodies respond alarmingly as if a foreign invader arrived declaring war. Foods loaded with sugars and simple carbohydrates, or processed with omega-6 oils for long shelf life have been the mainstay of the American diet for six decades. These foods have been slowly poisoning everyone.

How does eating a simple sweet roll create a cascade of inflammation to make you sick?

Imagine spilling syrup on your keyboard and you have a visual of what occurs inside the cell. When we consume simple carbohydrates such as sugar, blood sugar rises rapidly. In response, your pancreas secretes insulin whose primary purpose is to drive sugar into each cell where it is stored for energy. If the cell is full and does not need glucose, it is rejected to

avoid extra sugar gumming up the works.

When your full cells reject the extra glucose, blood sugar rises producing more insulin and the glucose converts to stored fat.

What does all this have to do with inflammation? Blood sugar is controlled in a very narrow range. Extra sugar molecules attach to a variety of proteins that in turn injure the blood vessel wall. This repeated injury to the blood vessel wall sets off inflammation. When you spike your blood sugar level several times a day, every day, it is exactly like taking sandpaper to the inside of your delicate blood vessels.

While you may not be able to see it, rest assured it is there. I saw it in over 5,000 surgical

patients spanning 25 years who all shared one common denominator -- inflammation in their arteries.

Let's get back to the sweet roll. That innocent looking goody not only contains sugars, it is baked in one of many omega-6 oils such as soybean. Chips and fries are soaked in soybean oil; processed foods are manufactured with omega-6 oils for longer shelf life. While omega-6's are essential -they are part of every cell membrane controlling what goes in and out of the cell -- they must be in the correct balance with omega-3's.

If the balance shifts by consuming excessive omega-6, the cell membrane produces chemicals called cytokines that directly cause inflammation.

Today's mainstream American diet has produced an extreme imbalance of these two fats. The ratio of imbalance ranges from 15:1 to as high as 30:1 in favor of omega-6. That's a tremendous amount of cytokines causing inflammation. In today's food environment, a 3:1 ratio would be optimal and healthy.

To make matters worse, the excess weight you are carrying from eating these foods creates overloaded fat cells that pour out large quantities of pro-inflammatory chemicals that add to the injury caused by having high blood sugar. The process that began with a sweet roll turns into a vicious cycle over time that creates heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and

finally, Alzheimer's disease, as the inflammatory process continues unabated.

There is no escaping the fact that the more we consume prepared and processed foods, the more we trip the inflammation switch little by little each day. The human body cannot process, nor was it designed to consume, foods packed with sugars and soaked in omega-6

oils.

There is but one answer to quieting inflammation, and that is returning to foods closer to their natural state. To build muscle, eat more protein. Choose carbohydrates that are very

complex such as colorful fruits and vegetables. Cut down on or eliminate inflammation-causing omega-6 fats like corn and soybean oil and the processed foods that are made from them.

One tablespoon of corn oil contains 7,280 mg of omega-6; soybean contains 6,940 mg. Instead, use olive oil or butter from grass-fed beef.

Animal fats contain less than 20% omega-6 and are much less likely to cause inflammation than the supposedly healthy oils labelled polyunsaturated. Forget the "science" that has been drummed into your head for decades. The science that saturated fat alone causes heart disease is non-existent. The science that saturated fat raises blood cholesterol is also very

weak. Since we now know that cholesterol is not the cause of heart disease, the concern about saturated fat is even more absurd today.

The cholesterol theory led to the no-fat, low-fat recommendations that in turn created the very foods now causing an epidemic of inflammation. Mainstream medicine made a terrible

mistake when it advised people to avoid saturated fat in favor of foods high in omega-6 fats. We now have an epidemic of arterial inflammation leading to heart disease and other silent killers.

What you can do is choose whole foods your grandmother served and not those your mom turned to as grocery store aisles filled with manufactured foods. By eliminating inflammatory

foods and adding essential nutrients from fresh unprocessed food, you will reverse years of damage in your arteries and throughout your body from consuming the typical American

diet.

www-ufit-com-sg.cdn.ampproj...

Dr. Dwight Lundell is the past Chief of Staff and Chief of Surgery at Banner Heart Hospital , Mesa , AZ. His private practice, Cardiac Care Center was in Mesa, AZ. Recently Dr. Lundell left surgery to focus on the nutritional treatment of heart disease. He is the founder of Healthy Humans Foundation that promotes human health with a focus on helping large corporations promote wellness. He is also the author of The Cure for Heart Disease and The Great Cholesterol Lie.

Article, words and images from:

getholistichealth.com/40505...

Original source of the article: preventdisease.com/news/12/...

[sos007 Ambassador in reply to ling]

Thanks for posting this. Please update your post with a web-link to the source.

[ling]

How is cheese good for gut health?

Is cheese not full of saturated fats?

Thank you

[sos007 Ambassador]

The debate between fat and sugar as the cause of heart disease was settled in the late 1960s by a Harvard University researcher and it was found to be --- sugar. However, due to a bribe, the research paper pointed the finger at fat. Therefore, the public was given the wrong advice for the last 50 years and many of today's doctors are not up to date on the research.

Read article here: npr.org/sections/thetwo-way...

Your gut is your second brain (helps in regulating hormones, such as seratonin, and your immune system) and requires a variety of food to maintain its health. Fermented forms of dairy such as plain yogurt and some cheeses, provide material health benefits -

"Our data suggests that fermented dairy products in general, and yogurt in particular, could be a key element affecting the relationship between diet and health by means of the modulation of gut microbial composition and functionality."

Medical study: Fermented Dairy Foods: Impact on Intestinal Microbiota and Health-Linked Biomarkers

Source: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl...

"Probiotics, good bacteria that can contribute to gut and overall health, can be found in some types of cheese as well as in dietary supplements, fermented foods, and yogurt. Typically, probiotics are in cheeses that have been aged but not heated afterward. This includes both soft and hard cheeses, including Swiss, provolone, Gouda, cheddar, Edam, Gruyère, and cottage cheese."

Source: health.harvard.edu/staying-...

time.com/5048478/health-ben...

Goat and sheep milk have a higher composition from MCT (medium chain fatty acids). MCT consumption has been linked to healthier outcomes. Source: healthline.com/nutrition/mc...

The French have one of the lowest incidents of coronary artery disease in the world by a wide margin. The French diet is high in full-fat dairy products. Both MCT in some cheeses as well as the sourcing of cheese from grass-fed versus grain-fed livestock play a role in the relative health benefits of some cheeses. That is not to say we can attribute their low levels of CAD to their consumption of cheese alone, but if cheese were that unhealthy, their relative risk for CAD would be much higher.

K2 is an essential vitamin that moves calcium from the arteries where it is needed - into your bones. K2 is found in high levels in certain cheeses such as the ones listed in the quotation above.

In general, fat is a better form of energy than carbohydrates. It satiates you faster and for much longer time periods.

This doesn't mean that you can binge-eat cheese, it does mean though that when carefully selected and in moderation, cheese can be a positive contributor to your overall health without contributing to heart disease.

Remember that science in general, and nutritional science specifically is an evolving area of understanding. As such, it is especially important for health professionals, but also for individuals to stay current on research in this area.

[ling]

Thank you for taking the time to reply.

[Red18]

Hellooooo sos007. Hope you are well. I was wondering whether you are having or have had the covid vaccine yet? I have had one vaccine, the Astrazeneca one. Concerned as i have had many headaches since?? I have never suffered with headaches at all. Never. Really worried. I am having a blood test tomorrow. Looking at my hormones and the menopause maybe causing the issue. They have already told me my platelet count isn't raised so not worry,but let's not forget ido take aspirin to thin my blood...