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from the what-about-coffee,-bacon,-and-poutine? dept.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
It's not everyday an issue of Science contains articles about newly discovered "fresh" impact craters (Hiawatha) or fingers the source of the worst year to be alive (534 in case you're time traveling).
But the same issue has these open (no paywall) articles summarizing what we do know about eating and living long healthy lives.
Quick takeaways:
- The 1977 guidelines that we all grew up with were written by politicians, not scientists.
- Trans-fats are bad, no matter what.
- Intermittent fasting can help your brain, kidneys, chemotherapy effectiveness and recovery, AND encourage weight loss.
- Refined sugars and carbs are generally bad for you.
There's way more than any summary can contain. In fact, almost every section of these four meta-articles could be their own discussion topic.
Since I care for all of you, I want you all to be as healthy and live as long as you want. These articles contain the state of-the-art on how to do that through proper eating habits.
Optimizing the diet.
Dietary fat: From foe to friend?
A time to fast
The gut microbiota at the intersection of diet and human health
Swifter, higher, stronger: What’s on the menu?
(Score: 1) by DECbot on Monday December 03 2018, @04:33PM
It's not all sugar that is bad. Glucose is fine as is and lactose is good for those who can handle it. The specific problem is fructose.
Dr. Lustig, MD does a good job present the problem. "Sugar: the Bitter Truth" [youtube.com]
tl;dw;
Glucose can be readily be used by every cell in the body the body. It goes from your gut, to your bloodstream and roughly 80% is directly used by the body and used for fuel; no processing needed. The remaining 20% is processed by the liver, which converts it to light density fat cells (VLDL) that are associated with heart disease. The brain will also receive signals to stop eating when glucose is consumed. Ethanol is also a carbohydrate--but is also an acute toxin. The reasons why we regulate ethanol is because of the effects of ethanol being metabolized by the brain. Roughly four times the amount of ethanol will reach the liver than glucose when the same serving size is consumed; 10% is consumed by stomach and intestine, 10% by the kidneys, muscles, and brain, and the remaining 80% by the liver. This gets converted to lots of things the liver tries to expel, like free fatty acids that end up in the muscles which causes insulin resistance or as light density fat cells (VLDL).
Fructose on the other hand must be processed completely by the liver because only the liver can metabolized it. Fructose does not stimulate insulin, and thus the signal to stop eating is not sent to the brain. Fructose ends up depleting the liver of phosphorous, and in the attempt to recover as much phosphorous as it can, the liver produces lots of uric acid as a byproduct--uric acid is the cause for gout and hypertension (high blood pressure). The end result is VLDL. But not all the fat is able to leave the liver and some becomes a lipid droplet within the liver and also causes liver inflammation. It also creates compounds that cause insulin in the the liver to be ineffective. This results in the pancreatitis making more insulin which raises blood pressure. This encourages more fat cell creation, hence obesity, and changes how your brain recognizes energy in a negative fashion--so it thinks it is starving and signals for more eating. The result of this is the common liver related diseases of alcoholism: hypertension, myocardial infarction, dyslipidemia, pancreatitis, obesity, hepatic dysfunction, fetal insulin resistance, habitual if not addictive consumption--that's 8 of the 12 diseases associated with alcoholism.
What we consider as refined sugar, or table sugar, is sucrose. It is one part glucose and one part fructose with a single molecular bond joining the two. Take in a glucose load, nearly none of it ends up as fat (less than 5%). Take in a fructose load, 30% of it becomes fat. A high sugar diet results in the same as a high fat diet. Fructose will cause new fat cell production, triglycerides to rise, and free fatty acids to rise (high levels of free fatty acids will call insulin resistance). In clinical studies, these numbers will tend to double in participants consuming the fructose load within 6 days.
The take away: glucose is fine as long as you don't consume excessively and start producing fat cells. Fructose will always become fat cells and will damage the body's ability to regulate itself and is always as harmful or more harmful to the liver than ethanol. Refined sugar is half fructose and thus why the informed community rails against it. If you want a challenge, eat food without added sugar, corn syrup, or high fructose corn syrup. I've found the easiest way is to make it yourself.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base