Blog

We are now in chapter 4 of 9 of the book, “The Great Cholesterol Myth”, this chapter is titled; Sugar: the Real Demon in the Diet. For those of you who like to cut right to the chase, here is this chapter’s take-home point: Sugar is a far greater danger to your hear than fat ever was. In fact, after a closer look at sugar and ifs effects on our body, you will understand the link between heart disease, obesity, and hypertension. It is SUGAR, that’s the culprit in the American Diet, not fat.

The Hormonal Effect of Food
Our journey starts with one simple premise: Hormones control almost every metabolic event that goes on in your body and YOU control some of the most critical hormones through your lifestyle, with food, stress, and your activity levels. Food may be the most powerful “Drug” you ever encounter because it causes dramatic changes in your hormones. Over the years many mainstream dietitians and doctors preached to overweight people at risk of heart disease to simply reduce calories and saturated fats. But all calories are not created equal. Some foods significantly boost levels of a hormone that stores fat, while other foods do not, even when the calories are the same. Not coincidentally, that fat-storing hormone also has some serious consequences for the heart. The name of that fat-storing hormone? INSULIN. Among insulin’s duties is to store excess sugar (glucose) in cells. Its sister hormone, glucagon, is responsible for opening up the cells and releasing stored glucose. Together their main job is to maintain blood sugar levels (insulin).

Both insulin and glucagon are essential to health. Without insulin, blood sugar would sky rocket and the result would be coma and death, a diabetics nightmare. However, without glucagon, blood sugar would plummet and the result would be brain dysfunction, coma and death. Interestly, insulin is the only hormone responsible for preventing blood sugar from rising too high, there are several other hormones that prevent it from going too low. You could say that insulin is so powerful that it takes five other hormones just to counter balance its effect.

To see how insulin is supposed to work in the body, lets take a look at a metabolism that hasn’t been “screwed up” yet by years of bad diet and sedentary living. A kid comes home from school and eats an apple. His blood sugar goes up slightly, as it always does when you eat food. The pancreas secrets a little shot of insulin and the insulin goes to work rounding up the excess sugar in the kids blood stream and escorting it over to the muscle cells. Which is dandy because this boy is now going to go out to play, or ride a bike, or do some other physical activity for which those muscle cells require fuel. So far, so good. The muscle cells welcome the extra sugar, which they use for fuel. The blood sugar levels drop back down to normal and even go down a little bit because the muscles are eating it up. Now the boy comes in for dinner.

Lets look at what most of us adults do. We wake up late, stress hormones coursing through our bodies. (These stress hormones are an important factor in heart disease, more on that later). These stress hormones signal the brain to fuel up for an emergency. You grab a Starbucks sweetened latte and a “low fat” bran muffin. Your blood sugar takes off like a rocket. The pancreas says “uh-oh there is sugar all over the place” and produces a bucketful of insulin to take the sugar to your muscles. Except the muscles aren’t having it. “What do we need all of this sugar for?” they ask. This guy then sits at a desk all day for work and when he goes home, he sits on the couch. So the muscle cells resist the effects of insulin. Insulin now has no choice, it takes the sugar to your fat cells. Excess sugar and high insulin levels have serious consequences, especially on the arteries, heart, and blood pressure.

Next week: The insulin – cholesterol connection!