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Carbohydrates in Metabolism

There is no evidence that human diet requires ANY carbohydrate, to maintain good health.

Good News: Since carbohydrate is NOT an essential part of a healthy diet, you have freedom to eat a diet with less carbohydrate to help you reduce your weight.

Lifestyle Change is Needed

To overcome carbohydrate intolerance you have to manage insulin yourself, by dietary control.

This has been your lifestyle: Breakfast cereals and toast call insulin for duty.
Morning tea with a biscuit or muffin keeps insulin active.
Lunch-time sandwiches, pie, cake or muffin, maybe an ice cream, call on insulin again.
Afternoon tea reinforces the call.
The evening meal with potatoes or rice, and fresh bread creates another glucose emergency.
Then in the evening, in front of TV we find other ways to keep insulin on duty.

When insulin is ON, fat burning is turned OFF. Your lifestyle keeps insulin ON all day, every day.

You are building adipose tissue all day, and you wonder why you're getting fat?

Here's what happens if carbohydrates dominate your diet, and you are very poor.

Turning Insulin OFF

After your overnight fast, you wake up quietly burning fat.

Local FileAt breakfast, don't make the mistake of calling insulin for duty.

No sugar, no cereals, no porridge, very little fruit, no toast, not even a water biscuit.

At morning tea time, drink saturated tea or coffee. Don't eat any carbohydrates.

Now to lunch: A small tin of fish and a salad? An omelet or quiche? Let insulin sleep.

For many people, this is all the dietary change you'll need to get back to a normal weight.

Carbohydrates in Metabolism

Eating Carbohydrate Produces Energy

CarbohydratesEating 1 cup of mashed potatoes or rice, converts very quickly to glucose in the blood.

That adds about 200kcal to your system over the next hour, creating excess blood glucose.

Only about 50kcal are burnt in normal activity, so at least 150kcal needs to be rapidly removed from the blood stream.

That pancreas produces insulin (The master hormone) to store the excess glucose.

Actions of Insulin

Insulin in the blood turns off fat burning, and forces glucose burning.

Insulin acts as a transporter, moving glucose across the cell membrane into cells.

Insulin helps the storage of glucose as glycogen in muscle tissues. (Limit about 2000kcal.)

Insulin over-rides the leptin signal Local Fileto the appestat; saying "fat storage has begun." The restoration of the proper glucose level in the blood is more important.

Insulin instructs the liver to turn excess glucose into fatty acids (Lipogenesis).

Local FileThese fatty acids are stored in your adipose tissue. (Mostly the fat around the belly)

The adipose tissue sends a leptin signal to the appestat, but it's ignored until the glucose storage crisis is resolved.

Local FileCarbohydrate Intolerance / Insulin Resistance

Local FileThe Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee Recommendations (2010) strongly state: "There are no detrimental effects of carbohydrates as a source of calories on these or other health outcomes." That doesn't tally well with recent research. For instance Local FileProf Tim Noakes says, "I believe insulin resistance (carbohydrate intolerance) is the most important medical disorder in the population today."

The alternative term, carbohydrate intolerance, better describes what the problem is. Over a long period, many years of eating a diet where sugars and carbohydrates are always plentiful, your system adapts to a constant excess of carbohydrates. Local FileThe homeostatic setting of your body is altered, and ceases to protect you.

In response to your diet, carbohydrate intolerance develops. Excess carbohydrate begins to make you sick. You lose control of your diet because the appestat no longer works efficiently.

Local FileAfter some time the symptoms of metabolic syndrome become evident, obesity, high blood pressure, high fasting glucose, high triglycerides, low HDL-Cholesterol, and perhaps gout.

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