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Is Sugar Killing Us?

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Re: Is Sugar Killing Us?

#121

Post by Mtinie »

DanBC wrote: post #103
kumarski wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's very true that in most scenarios it's entirely too easy to eat too much sugar in the foods we consume. I think most people with a nutritional chemistry background would agree, as well, most general medicine practitioners that eating less sugar is a proper direction for much of the population.

That's not the point you made though. You specifically said that it's hard to overconsume fat and protein. It really isn't. When we look at what obese people eat they aren't just eating too much sugar. They're eating too much of everything, including fat. Cutting out the sugar would help (especially because it's often a pointless addition with a painless substitution eg soda to non-sugar soda), but it would not be en…

> Cutting out the sugar would help (especially because it's often a pointless addition with a painless substitution eg soda to non-sugar soda), but it would not be enough.

This may not be as useful a replacement as we've always been lead to believe. There's recent research that suggests that the body is tricked into behaving as if the sugar substitutes are actually sugar[0], especially when considering abdominal obesity.

---

[0] "Chronic Low-Calorie Sweetener Use and Risk of Abdominal Obesity among Older Adults: A Cohort Study" - http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....

Re: Is Sugar Killing Us?

#123

Post by amelius »

gtrubetskoy wrote: post #106

What's interesting is that most of the population of this planet does not even realize that glucose is not the only source of energy and that we can be powered entirely by beta-hydroxybutyrate (which comes from fats); our carbohydrate requirement is zero because our body can synthesize all the glucose it needs. Here is a pretty good and scientific talk about what is happening (warning > 1 hour long): https://www.yout…

I didnt' watch the video yet. But do you need to be "in ketosis" to benefit from this energy source?

How difficult is it to incorporate this in your diet? And is it expensive?

Re: Is Sugar Killing Us?

#124

Post by spilk »

Article is paywalled, but anecdotally, last year I inched past that magic A1C reading where the doctor tells you you are Type 2 Diabetic. I switched to a low-carb/high-fat diet ( https://reddit.com/r/keto ) and fairly rapidly lost 30 pounds while eating things like avocados, eggs, cheese, butter, coconut oil and bacon.

Several months of this diet and my A1C has dipped back to almost-normal, not even "pre-diabetic" levels. For me at least, carbs are definitely a killer.

Re: Is Sugar Killing Us?

#125

Post by adrice727 »

mads wrote: post #56
mgarfias wrote: post #43

Recently diagnosed diabetic here. Yes, I'm fat, but no excessively so. When I tell people I'm diabetic they're confused as I don't look the type. What I can say is that I can see the effects of cortisol (stress) on my fasting glucose levels. When my ex does something that causes strife, my glucose levels will be 20-30 pts higher for the next few days. In general, I ate fairly decently, and didn't consume mass amounts…

Maybe there is a relationship between sugar consumption and our ability to cope with stress? I found, that when I stopped eating sugar, it wasn't exactly a big revelation, but merely a subtle change (mentally), that made me somehow less anxious and when I had irrational anxiety "attacks", I was able to suppress them better. I don't have any better way to explain this psychological stuff, but for me there was a change…

This isn't surprising given everything we're starting to discover about the connection between gut bacteria and mental health[1], and that sugar has been shown to promote the growth of unhealthy gut bacteria[2].

[1]http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/06/gut-bacter...

[2]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3448089/

Re: Is Sugar Killing Us?

#126

Post by ak217 »

piva00 wrote: post #98
calvano915 wrote: post #52

Third year nutrition undergrad. Simple sugar consumption as a high percentage of carbohydrates/calories has the effect of chronic inflammation via oxidative stress, which is a factor of diabetes and other chronic disease. This article briefly discusses inflammation and has mostly sound nutritional advice: http://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/what-you-eat-c... This lecture by Dr. Robert Lustig has been very p…

As a layman who got into nutrition for weight training purposes I want to ask you: why have I seen an uptick in the use of "inflammation" more broadly in nutrition from an year or so ago? You may be well aware of the whole broscience that runs in fitness forums and it's very hard sometimes to find good and scientifically accurate sources and until now I've been lumping most of those "inflammation" articles together w…

There is a complex relationship between your diet, your gut microbiota (which pre-process your diet for you), and your immune system (which is sensitive to both gross and fine (signaling molecule) changes in the gut). The scope of this relationship was only recently realized, much of it due to new molecular biology techniques. For example there's the recent article about a boost in neuroinflammation observed from the presence of gut microbiota implicated in Parkison's progression in a mouse model, http://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(16)31590-2.pdf ). Celiac disease and inflammatory bowel disease are two well-known categories of disorders, but more generally your gut is the most permeable interface of your body, so the immune system is very buffed up and sensitive to all kinds of signals there, affecting the background state of the entire system. That has the potential to cause harmful unnecessary inflammation in other parts of the body.

Re: Is Sugar Killing Us?

#128

Post by koolba »

amelius wrote: post #123
gtrubetskoy wrote: post #106

What's interesting is that most of the population of this planet does not even realize that glucose is not the only source of energy and that we can be powered entirely by beta-hydroxybutyrate (which comes from fats); our carbohydrate requirement is zero because our body can synthesize all the glucose it needs. Here is a pretty good and scientific talk about what is happening (warning > 1 hour long): https://www.yout…

I didnt' watch the video yet. But do you need to be "in ketosis" to benefit from this energy source? How difficult is it to incorporate this in your diet? And is it expensive?

> I didnt' watch the video yet. But do you need to be "in ketosis" to benefit from this energy source?

Your body will handle that naturally. If it doesn't have enough of resource A, it'll try resource B, then C, ... It happens automatically.

Re: Is Sugar Killing Us?

#129

Post by csommers »

TACIXAT wrote: post #111

I'm celiac, so my body has some crazy responses to food. I get withdrawal symptoms from a couple of foods and have cut them out because of it. Sugar was the most recent. When I stop eating it I get a sinus headache, I get the shakes (like drinking too much caffeine), and if it's bad, I throw up. What blew my mind in giving up sugar was that I lost 5 lbs. I'm was lean at 155 lbs and 6'1, I dropped below 150 now. It re…

>What blew my mind in giving up sugar was that I lost 5 lbs. I'm was lean at 155 lbs and 6'1, I dropped below 150 now. It really opened my eyes to how much sugar is converted to fat.

Pretty much all water weight.

Re: Is Sugar Killing Us?

#130

Post by jabv »

WA wrote: post #104
neals wrote: post #70

I've really cut down on sugar from august to november. I didn't really notice anything except loosing a lot of weight (mind that I already was under weight, but I should probably build some muscle anyway) So in comes December. And there is candy and chocolate everywhere. In just a single week our house filled up with it and here I am, stuffing my face full of sugar. I think the struggle just goes on, right?

I cut sugar for 40 days in April and lost weight, too (having normal weight). After a while, I was back to old habits. Thought about trying the same thing in mid-November. Worked alright. Then came December and while I'm eating a cookie here and there, it's way less than previous years. I think the struggle just goes on, right? To some extend: Yes. But something flipped in my head this time. The struggle is less seri…

Finally, a confession: some people on this forum really DO have more days in a month than other folks!
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