I am diabetic.. I sensed some pain in the big toe, one day. ..My search for reasons lead to this article.......Read on.......if you are diabetic.
All sugars are not equal — even though they contain the same amount of calories — because they are metabolized differently in the body.
Table sugar is sucrose, which is half fructose, half glucose. When you eat this sucrose, the sucrose gets metabolized in the intestines to free fructose and free glucose that you then absorb. High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is 55 percent fructose and 45 percent glucose.( Why talk of HFCS, when it is not widely used in India….? There is a reason… Read ON…)
Most animals have learned how to become fat and how to become thin. Hibernating mammals will double their weight and fat in preparation for winter. These animals develop all the features of metabolic syndrome that we do. They get fat. Their visceral fat goes up. They get fatty liver. The triglycerides go up in their blood. They get insulin-resistant... It’s a normal process. It’s not a disease. This is how animals store fat. It’s part of the fat storage syndrome.
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.
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 in the form of HFCS.
How Your Body Metabolizes Fructose Versus Glucose
Fructose is metabolized by your liver to fat in far more rapidly than any other sugar, and it promotes visceral fat. This is the type of fat that collects around your organs and in your abdominal region and is associated with a greater risk of heart disease.
The fatty acids created during fructose metabolism accumulate as fat droplets in your liver and skeletal muscle tissues, causing insulin resistance; Insulin resistance progresses to metabolic syndrome and type II diabetes.
Consuming fructose activates a key enzyme, fructokinase, which in turn activates another enzyme that causes cells to accumulate fat. 120 calories intake of fructose results in 40 calories being stored as fat.
Glucose suppresses your 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.. Dr Robert Lustig, Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology at the University of California, has been a pioneer in decoding sugar metabolism. When you consume fructose, you may actually be "programming" your body to consume more calories, as fructose fails to trigger that feeling of fullness, and may even trigger continued hunger pangs.
With glucose, your liver has to break down only 20 percent. 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.
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.
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.
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 diet in 1975 has been a multi-billion dollar boon for the corn industry (which is subsidized to farmers by Govt in US).
Recommended Fructose Allowance
'The reality, however, is that hunger and fullness are major determinants of how much humans eat, just as thirst determines how much humans drink.
These sensations cannot simply be willed away or ignored.' In order to eat less (and consume fewer calories overall), one should avoid foods or ingredients that fail to satisfy hunger. And that, according to the results from the new study, would mean those fructose-sweetened foods—and drinks."
How Fructose Affects Your "Fat Switch"
Interestingly, this is exactly the same switch animals use to fatten up in the fall and to burn fat during the winter. Fructose is the dietary ingredient that turns on this switch, causing cells to accumulate fat, both in animals and in humans! enzyme that makes you fat is turned on in obese people; People become obese and it is now realized it is related to the sugar intake. For example, we don’t make vitamin C. We also have higher uric acids than most other animals. When we look at when these mutations occurred, we could see that they actually occurred during periods of human famine, and that these were probably mutations that allowed us to become fatter in response to fructose than other animals. We’re much more sensitive to sugar than most animals, and it’s because of these mutations.
There are five basic truths that Dr. Johnson explains in detail in his most recently book, The Fat Switch, that over-turn current concepts:
•Large portions of food and too little exercise are NOT solely responsible for why you are gaining weight
•Metabolic Syndrome is actually a healthy adaptive condition that animals undergo to store fat to help them survive periods of famine. The problems is most all of us are always feasting and never undergo fasting. Our bodies have not adapted to this yet and as a result, this beneficial switch actually causes damage to contemporary man
•Uric acid is increased by specific foods and causally contributes to obesity and insulin resistance
•Fructose-containing sugars cause obesity not by calories but by turning on the fat switch
•Effective treatment of obesity requires turning off your fat switch and improving the function of your cells' mitochondria
Dietary sugar, and fructose in particular, is a significant "tripper of your fat switch," so understanding how sugars of all kinds affect your weight and health is imperative.
Study: Midnight Snacks Can Mess You up on a Molecular Level
Avoiding all food for at least three hours before you go to bed is an exceedingly helpful strategy for those seeking to maintain a healthy weight. This will lower your blood sugar during sleep and help minimize damage from too much sugar floating around. Additionally, it will jump start the glycogen depletion process so you can shift to fat burning mode.
When you are sleep deprived, your body decreases production of leptin, the hormone that tells your brain there is no need for more food, while increasing levels of ghrelin, a hormone that triggers hunger. (These are the same hormones detrimentally affected by a high-fructose diet, as discussed above.) There's strong evidence that proper sleep and diet can help maintain or rebuild the balance between your circadian clock and your metabolism, and that lack of rest or disruption of normal sleep patterns can increase hunger, leading to obesity-related illnesses and accelerated aging.
Uric acid:
Dr. Johnson expounded on the links between fructose consumption and uric acid levels, and how your uric acid levels are a major predictor for obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and fatty liver disease.. Most people who are obese and insulin-resistant have high uric acid. According to the latest research, the safest range of uric acid is between 3 and 5.5 milligrams per deciliter, and there appears to be a steady relationship between uric acid levels and blood pressure and cardiovascular risk, even down to the range of 3 to 4 mg/dl. Dr. Johnson suggests that the ideal uric acid level is probably around 4 mg/dl for men and 3.5 mg/dl for women.
All Calories are NOT Created Equal .Eeven if you control the number of calories you eat, if those calories come from fructose, you are at increased risk of developing metabolic syndrome, or prediabetes, which includes: Insulin resistance, Fatty liver, High blood pressure and High triglycerides. Dr. Johnson’s research shows that a high fructose diet is the key to developing metabolic syndrome, and as soon as you throw fructose into the mix, calories in versus calories out is no longer a functional equation . In a controlled experiment, it was the fructose-fed rats that developed metabolic syndrome as compared to another group which was fed with a different carbohydrate.. Suddenly they get fatty liver. They get visceral fat. Their blood pressure goes up. Their triglycerides are high. They actually developed all these features, of metabolic syndrome and diabetes whereas the glucose-fed rats did not even though they were eating the same number of calories!
The obesity trend will not magically reverse itself “ it will require each and every one of you to become educated, savvy consumers, and it will require that you bring back home cooking; using fresh, whole, organic foods.”, according to Dr.Johnson.
Are Fruits Good or Bad for You?
As a standard recommendation, it is advised to keep your TOTAL fructose consumption below 25 grams per day or as little as 15 grams a day if you have any health problems related to insulin resistance, such as high blood pressure, diabetes or heart disease as you're virtually guaranteed to consume "hidden" sources of fructose if you drink beverages other than water and eat processed food.
Fifteen grams of fructose is not much -- it represents two bananas, one-third cup of raisins, or two Medjool dates. Remember, the average 12-ounce can of soda contains 40 grams of sugar, at least half of which is fructose, so one can of soda alone would exceed your daily allotment.
Natural fruits, although there’s some fructose there¦ there are so many wonderful things in natural fruits like vitamin C, antioxidants, resveratrol, flavonols, quercetin, and all these things that actually neutralize some of the effects of fructose. Because of that, natural fruits do not seem to carry the same degree of risk. That said, keep in mind that large amounts of fruits, as well as fruit juices and dried fruits will typically contain large doses of fructose, so use in moderation. You simply MUST understand that because HFCS is so darn cheap, it is added to virtually every processed food. Even if you consumed no soda or fruit, it is very easy to exceed 25 grams of hidden fructose in your diet.
Drinking fruit juice or eating dried fruits is not recommended if you’re struggling with your weight or are diabetic. The term sugar also applies to other natural sources such as honey.
So please BE CAREFUL with your fruit consumption.
FRUIT Serving Size / Grams of Fructose
Limes 1 medium / 0
Lemons 1 medium /0.6
Prune 1 medium /1.2
Apricot 1 medium /1.3
Guava 2 medium /2.2
Kiwifruit 1 medium /3.4
Blackberries 1 cup /3.5
Cherries, sweet 10 /3.8
Strawberries 1 cup / 3.8
Pineapple 1 slice (3.5" x .75")/ 4.0
Grapefruit, pink or red 1/2 medium /4.3
Date (Medjool) 1 medium / 7.7
Peach 1 medium / 5.9
Orange (navel) 1 medium / 6.1
Papaya 1/2 medium / 6.3
Banana 1 medium / 7.1
Blueberries 1 cup /7.4
Apple 1 medium /9.5
Watermelon 1/16 med. melon /11.3
Pear 1 medium / 11.8
Raisins 1/4 cup / 12.3
Grapes, seedless (green or red) 1 cup /12.4
Mango 1/2 medium /16.2
Figs, dried 1 cup /23.0
It calls for following a very low fructose diet for two weeks, which has the effect of "rebooting" your system. Sugar activates its own pathways, and the more sugar you eat, the more sensitive you become to it, and the more your body starts absorbing. By cutting out sugar for a period of time, you can reduce the hyperactive metabolic system that has developed, and start over.
What Sweeteners Can You Use?
It's worth noting here that some alternatives that would appear healthy to most people are still loaded with fructose. Agave syrup, for example, is being falsely advertised as "natural." It is actually HIGHLY processed and is 80 percent fructose.
Likewise, honey is very high in fructose. Although its fructose content varies, it typically contains about the same amount as HFCS, or more. So even though honey contains many other beneficial nutrients, you'll want to use honey very sparingly.
A far safer alternative is to use pure glucose.
You can buy pure glucose (dextrose) as a sweetener. It is only 70 percent as sweet as sucrose, so you'll end up using a bit more of it for the same amount of sweetness-but still well worth it for your health as it has ZERO grams of fructose. Remember, glucose can be used directly by every cell in your body and as such is far safer than the metabolic poison fructose.
Another option is to use the herb stevia.
What's a Sugarholic to Do?
It is recommended that one avoids as much sugar as possible. This is especially important if you are overweight or have diabetes, high cholesterol, or high blood pressure. We don't live in a perfect world, and following rigid dietary guidelines is not always practical or even possible. Some guidelines:
1.Use the herb stevia.
3.Do not use or use organic raw honey in moderation.
4.Avoid ALL artificial sweeteners, which can damage your health even more quickly than fructose.
5.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.
nutritiondata.self.com gives the fructose content of all foods including fruits.
Yes, My toe pain was due to uric acid. I checked , it was 35.5 mg/ml
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