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Sugar alters hormones and metabolism, sets stage for obesity and diabetes

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Re: Sugar alters hormones and metabolism, sets stage for obesity and diabetes

#161

Post by cpymchn »

Fnoord wrote: post #154
cpymchn wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Carbs increase insulin. Insulin increases the level of lipoprotein lipase (LPL) in your body. LPL dictates how much energy you store as white fat. No carbs --> low insulin --> low LPL. So FWIW @ericabiz is correct "It really is the carbs and sugar that do you in". You also responded to @kichuku regarding sugar being sugar: > The natural in sugar is irrelevant. Sugar is sugar; as in fructose is fructose, and glucose i…

> So FWIW @ericabiz is correct "It really is the carbs and sugar that do you in". Its not. The people who are obese mostly [1] consume too much, and often carbs are the culprit. If they reduce their calorie intake, they lose weight. It doesn't matter if they use a keto pseusoscience with that, go to a dietist to follow a raw food pseudoscience diet, or diet solo without a dietist limiting caloric intake on sheer will…

"keto pseudoscience" is loaded phrasing for a mechanism that has been understood and uncontroversial for 200 years.

If you are unfamiliar... the core insight is that obesity is an endocrine disorder; your hormones — not your caloric intake nor the amount you exercise — is the primary reason you gain or lose fat.

Here is a short explanation as to why this is:

* [enzymes] whether you store fat or not is determined by enzymes — specifically hormone sensitive lipase (HSL) and lipoprotein lipase (LPL)

* [hormones] production and inhibition of those enzymes is controlled by your hormones — including insulin, adrenaline, cortisol, estrogen and others.

* [diet] the easiest way to control your insulin levels is to keep your blood sugar low; the easiest way to control blood sugar is to eliminate carbs from your diet.

As I mentioned above... this can be simplified as...

No carbs —> suppressed insulin —> maximum HSL production.

'limiting the caloric intake' -- as you suggest -- is a blind alley when discussing this mechanism. It is a necessary but not a sufficient condition to lose weight. Your body won't draw on your fat reserves if it doesn't have to. i.e. it will happily extract the energy it needs from your gut all day long, provided your gut is full. That means you are partially correct; if LPL is low and if you are in a deficit then the body will draw down on your reserves and you will lose weight. But the opposite isn't true. If LPL is high, irrespective of your deficit or your willpower, then you won't lose weight. Conversely 'eating too much' isn't a diabetes risk... provided your hormones are in order.

If you have any sources that contradict the endocrine hypothesis, I would be keen to see them.

Re: Sugar alters hormones and metabolism, sets stage for obesity and diabetes

#162

Post by aaron-lebo »

didgeoridoo wrote: post #160
aaron-lebo wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know we like to one up each other on HN, but you're just talking past the main point. Calories matter. If you eat too many, you get fat. Some calories might be "better" than others, but they are a standard of unit of energy for a reason. A calorie is a calorie. Would you like to try the butter diet? I can guarantee you you'll get fat.

Surprisingly, you wouldn’t. I basically have been on your “butter diet” for over a year. I get about 80% of my calories from fat, much of it saturated. The rest is protein. I’ve lost about 50 pounds, normalized my blood pressure & cholesterol, and feel amazing.

How many calories were you eating pre and post diet?

2 sticks of butter is almost 1800 calories, that would be a weird diet with lots of hunger. There probably are a lot of sources of fat that work better than that.

Re: Sugar alters hormones and metabolism, sets stage for obesity and diabetes

#164

Post by craptocurrency »

kichuku wrote: post #10

I would like to share an anecdote. In March 2016, I was weighing 96 kilograms (211.64 pounds). I made just one change during that time which is to stop having anything with sugar. I continued to take other natural sweeteners like jaggery and honey. The rest of my diet remained the same and my activity level remained the same ( I work in IT as a network engineer in a desk job) In October 2016, I was weighing 72 kilos…

Wtf, tell something which we don’t know about.

Re: Sugar alters hormones and metabolism, sets stage for obesity and diabetes

#165

Post by nextos »

analog31 wrote: post #150
nextos wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps you removed bread?

Yes, that was probably a lot of it. I have no doubt that my caloric intake decreased more than just from butter, and next on the list would most likely be carbs. I started eating more of some other things such as lean meats and beans.

I tend to think good quality butter, especially grassfed & unpasteurised, is very healthy in moderate amounts (great vitamin K2 source).

Re: Sugar alters hormones and metabolism, sets stage for obesity and diabetes

#166

Post by freyr »

driverdan wrote: post #128
kichuku wrote: post #10

I would like to share an anecdote. In March 2016, I was weighing 96 kilograms (211.64 pounds). I made just one change during that time which is to stop having anything with sugar. I continued to take other natural sweeteners like jaggery and honey. The rest of my diet remained the same and my activity level remained the same ( I work in IT as a network engineer in a desk job) In October 2016, I was weighing 72 kilos…

In other words you eliminated a significant portion of your daily calories, resulting in a net loss of calories per day. Had you been overeating something other than sugar (eg fried food) and eliminated that instead the outcome would have been the same.

Your comment directly contradicts everything claimed in the article. Specifically, it makes the case that all calories are not created equal, and sugar in particular heavily impacts metabolism and fat accumulation.

Whether this is true is up for debate, but you haven't brought any evidence to the table.

Re: Sugar alters hormones and metabolism, sets stage for obesity and diabetes

#167

Post by refurb »

kichuku wrote: post #10

I would like to share an anecdote. In March 2016, I was weighing 96 kilograms (211.64 pounds). I made just one change during that time which is to stop having anything with sugar. I continued to take other natural sweeteners like jaggery and honey. The rest of my diet remained the same and my activity level remained the same ( I work in IT as a network engineer in a desk job) In October 2016, I was weighing 72 kilos…

You say you cut out sugars, but then mentioned using honey as a sweeter which is nearly 100% sugar and 40% fructose.

I assume you mean you cut out white sugar? Sucrose?

Re: Sugar alters hormones and metabolism, sets stage for obesity and diabetes

#168

Post by refurb »

electriclove wrote: post #133
projektir wrote: post #100

But why has obesity not been such a problem in the past, despite sugar being available? One point to make from the article, though: "They suggested that the physician-authors were trying to con the obese with the fraudulent argument that they could become lean without doing the hard work of curbing their perverted appetites." If you want to really confuse what's going on, turn to moralism. Desire to judge and to avoi…

Sugar was not readily available until relatively recently.

In the 15th century, Venice was the chief sugar refining and distribution centre in Europe.[6]

From Wikipedia.

Sugar has been around far longer than our very recent obesity epidemic.

Re: Sugar alters hormones and metabolism, sets stage for obesity and diabetes

#169

Post by WillPostForFood »

cheald wrote: post #144
WillPostForFood wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are getting lost in semantics, because if you are saying: there are calories ("sugars") which make it much easier to gain weight. Then a calorie isn't a calorie.

Calories are calories (it's literally a measure of energy!) The packages they come in will effect hormonal and psychological responses differently which may affect the amount you would take in if intake is left unmonitored. To that extent, it's wise to take in foods which don't nudge you towards over consuming, but if you can be disciplined and take in a quantity of energy less than you expend on a consistent basis,…

You are making the same semantic argument I was criticizing. In the context of this discussion we aren't talking about the literal measure of energy, but the package. I.e., is a quantity of sugar that has a calorie of energy the same to the body as a quantity of fat or fiber that contains a calorie of energy. That's what someone is claiming when they say a calorie is a calorie. And to that question, the evidence bears out that it the effects are not just psychological, and don't just affect desire to eat. If you took two twins, and fed one 2000 calories of cane sugar a day, and fed the other 2000 calories of raw broccoli, after a month, they wouldn't have the same weight.

Re: Sugar alters hormones and metabolism, sets stage for obesity and diabetes

#170

Post by jm2721 »

sn9 wrote: post #155

Sugar's role in diabetes seems likely to be true, but to say that CICO is false and a mutually exclusive explanation compared to the way in which insulin affects one's metabolism is empirically false [0]. Taubes would be hard pressed to explain how you could lose weight on a diet of Twinkies or how those subsisting on high carb, low fat, low protein diets that fail to meet their caloric needs in famine-afflicted regi…

CICO is not 'false', per se, but it's fundamentally misleading and tautological. Yes, people will lose weight on a calorie restricted diet of just twinkies. However, their bodies metabolic rate will decrease gradually to the point where continuing to maintain a caloric deficit will be unsustainable (i.e. a 500 calorie deficit if your basal metabolic rate is only 750 or 1000), at which point they'll stop losing weight, but still be 'skinny fat'. They'll also cause potentially irreparable harm to their liver and pancreas, and if they do manage to sustain it for longer periods, be on the express track for diabetes and heart disease. The difference between eating equivalent calories of twinkies or a salad is that one is a toxic substance and the other isn't. In the same vein, as another poster mentioned above, you can say that a milligram is a milligram, but a milligram of cyanide will kill you while a milligram of water is harmless. That's why more and more people are challenging CICO; it gives you the false sense that replacing meat and vegetables with coke and doritos is harmless as long as they're equivalent calories.

Nobody is suggesting that CICO and the insulin theory are mutually exclusive; what the author is saying is that CICO is a profoundly unhelpful statement for people looking to lose weight, improve their health, or reverse diabetes/heart disease.

> Taubes would be hard pressed to explain how those subsisting on high carb, low fat, low protein diets that fail to meet their caloric needs in famine-afflicted regions remain thin.

Thin doesn't mean healthy. We're talking about disease, not necessarily weight, and you can have metabolic syndrome even if you're considered 'thin'. Most people who are thin with a poor diet have visceral fat (fat around the organs) which is far worse than subcutaneous fat (as a risk factor).

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