Once glycogen stores are full from the increased glucose that resulted from your breakfast bowl of Cheerios, Raisin Bran, or Cornflakes the excess blood sugar is stored as fat (yep you heard that right, FAT) in the form a triglycerides, or fatty acids (for all of you nerds like me think about the Kreb’s cycle). What form are these fatty acids are stored as? Saturated fat! (Palmitic acid specifically) Now what’s funny is we’re eating the low fat, high complex carboydrate diet marketed to us via the USDA and the lovely food companies that produce our cheap “healthy” food to avoid saturated fat because we’ve been lead to believe that eating saturated fat is one of the causes of heart disease (more how this came about later). Do you see the problem with this recommendation? This is nothing but a high sugar, high glucose diet that ends up converting the glucose into the deadly thing we have been told to avoid, saturated fat.
I grew up in Iowa and my family had a farm that raised some cattle. I learned early on that to make your cattle fat to give them that so desired fat marbling craved in steaks you don’t feed them what they’re supposed to eat (grass), but instead feed them grain and don’t let them move around very much. They get fat very quickly and we don't feed them fat. Look at our food pyramid! We're told that we should be eating a lot of grain. Is there any wonder why we currently have an obesity epidemic in the US? At least we’re becoming well marbled Americans.
Think about what else happens because of the insulin that is being produced to reduce your blood sugar after your favorite bowl of cereal every morning. When blood sugar levels are constantly spiking from a diet high in carbohydrates, the amount of insulin required to deal with that will, over time, damage the insulin receptors, blunting their ability to work. Yet the high levels of sugar still need to be lowered, and lowered quickly. So the pancreas pumps out even more insulin, which temporarily forces the insulin receptors into action but ultimately creates still more damage. Now there is so much insulin in the blood that by the time it's all absorbed by the insulin receptors, blood sugar levels will be too low. This cycle, of high blood sugar à too much insulin à low blood sugar, is called hypoglycemia, and it ends when the sufferer, biologically desperate to raise her blood sugar levels, puts another dose of sugar into her mouth with a sweaty, shaking hand. That will help, for an hour or two-until her blood sugar crashes again and the whole process starts over.
Where it really ends is in type II diabetes (which is currently affecting children and adults at pandemic levels, yet we hear more about the swine flu than we do about our children dying from preventable lifestyle diseases, this crushes me inside). The resistant insulin receptors demand too much insulin, more than the pancreas could ever make. The chronic excess sugar destroys the nerves, the arteries, the retinas, the heart. Despite every advance in medical science, a diabetic's life can be shortened by one third. Such are the wages of civilization's dietary sins. No drug or surgery is every going to fix a lifestyle problem. Lifestyle problems need lifestyle solutions (Eat Well, Move Well, Think Well).
Because insulin also controls a number of other basic life functions, high levels of insulin will cause damage throughout the body. Insulin triggers cholesterol synthesis, activating the enzymes that spur cholesterol production. About 80 percent of your cholesterol is made in your body: only 20 percent is dietary, which is one reason why low-fat diets have proven basically useless. Though every one of your cells both makes and needs cholesterol, most of it is produced in the liver. Elevated insulin means elevated cholesterol. It’s these elevated cholesterol levels that have been caused by a lifestyle problem caused by the “healthy” diet that has been marketed to us via companies like Pepsico, Frito Lay, and General Mill that have made the pharmaceutical industry trillions of dollars. My guess is 100% of the people reading this blog know someone who is on a statin drug. But our dependence on cholesterol medications hasn’t reduced the cases of heart disease in the US. In fact heart disease on the rise. Why? Too much insulin triggers the growth of smooth muscle cells that line the arteries, thickening the walls and reducing elasticity. Blood volume of the arteries shrinks, which means the heart has to pump harder, which is another way of saying "high blood pressure. Insulin also triggers the kidneys to retain fluid, which again increases blood pressure. Arteries with less elasticity are more prone to plaque and arterial spasm, which are the causes of heart disease. Insulin also encourages fibrous connective tissue to grow inside the arteries, providing a scaffold for the first layer of plaque. Lifestyle problems need lifestyle solutions (Eat Well, Move Well, Think Well).
Sources:
Keith, Lierre. The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice and Sustainability. Kindle Edition. PM Press. March 1, 2009.
Chesnut, James. The Innate Diet and Natural Hygiene. 2004. The Wellness Practice--Global Self Health Corp.
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