High fructose consumption causes rapid, extensive liver damage even without weight gain

Living in USA, we are exposed to high fructose corn syrup everywhere. Why do all soft drinks, most cereals, breads, cookies, cakes, ice cream the list goes on… contain so much high fructose corn syrup instead of sugar? It is cheaper and companies make more money but what effect has so much concentrated high fructose corn syrup on the body?

The medical profession has overlooked some major pathological effects of fructose consumption and its effects on liver function. Regardless of whether or not a person gains weight from it, consuming fructose was recently shown by researchers from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in North Carolina to cause hepatic steatosis, a non-alcoholic form of fatty liver disease that in some patients can lead to cirrhosis.
Published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (AJCN), their study found that, by itself, fructose can trigger rapid liver damage even when all other factors remain equal. In other words, a relatively skinny person can sustain extensive liver damage from fructose consumption, even if he or she doesn’t become obese from it. Fructose consumers also have an exceptional propensity toward developing diabetes, according to the data.

In one study, scientists gave two groups of monkeys an all-you-can-eat buffet for seven years. The target group was given access to low-fat foods with added fructose, while the control group was given access only to low-fat, low-fructose foods. All other factors remained equal, and the animals were given equal access to whatever quantities of food they desired.

During the evaluative period, monkeys in the fructose group were observed to gain about 50 percent more weight than the control group. They also developed diabetes at three times the rate of the control group as well as severe cases of hepatic steatosis that were clearly unique to fructose consumption.

Fructose shown to damage intestinal flora, cause gut leakage

In order to verify that fructose itself, and not some combination of fructose and weight gain, was responsible for the high rates of liver damage, the researchers took 10 middle-aged, normal-weight monkeys who had never before consumed fructose and divided them into two comparable groups.

For a course of six weeks, one group was fed a calorie-controlled diet containing 24 percent fructose while the other group was fed a calorie-controlled diet containing a negligible amount of fructose, or about 0.5 percent. Both groups were given an equal amount of fat, carbohydrates and protein, but from varying sources.

What they found is that not only did fructose directly harm the monkeys’ livers, but it also altered the bacterial composition of their guts. In essence, fructose was found to cause intestinal microflora to leak from the intestines, enter the bloodstream and damage the liver — and at a rate of up to 30 percent higher compared to the monkeys that consumed almost no fructose.

“High added sugars caused bacteria to exit the intestines, go into the blood stream and damage the liver,” wrote the authors. “The liver damage began even in the absence of weight gain. This could have clinical implications because most doctors and scientists have thought that it was the fat in and around tissues in the body that caused the health problems.”

In order to avoid high fructose consumption start reading labels,  avoid any foods which contain high fructose corn syrup or fructose and trust me its in almost all processed foods.  Try cooking from scratch and if you need to use a sweetener try using raw honey, coconut sugar, stevia, erythritol, or xylitol.

Sources for this article include:

http://www.wakehealth.edu

http://ajcn.nutrition.org

http://www.health.harvard.edu

http://science.naturalnews.com

 

A Calorie is Not a Calorie

Eat less than you burn and you’ll lose weight – it’s preached as the “be all, end all” of weight loss and it’s completely WRONG.

Truth is, the number of calories you eat is not the only factor that affects your body composition.  In fact, there are at least 5 other factors that need to be considered, including:

1.The thermic effect of the food ingested.  The thermic effect of food (TEF) measures the amount of energy that is required to support the processes of digesting, absorbing, and assimilating food nutrients as well as the energy expended as a result of the central nervous system’s stimulatory effect on metabolism when food is ingested.  Of the three macronutrients, protein carries the highest thermic effect.

2. The fiber content of the food ingested.  Due to its chemical makeup, fiber is classified as a carbohydrate; however, it is unlike other carbohydrates in that it is a mostly indigestible nutrient.  Even though each gram of fiber contains four calories, these calories will remain undigested and will not be absorbed.  Therefore, if one were to consume 300 calories of red beans (a food in which nearly 1/3 of the caloric content is from fiber), approximately 100 of these calories would pass through the intestinal tract undigested.

3. The glycemic and insulin index of the food ingested.  The glycemic and insulin index are scaled numbers that refer to how quickly a particular carbohydrate source enters the bloodstream as sugar and how much insulin is needed to rid that sugar from the bloodstream, respectively.  Generally speaking, there is a positive relationship between the two; that is, the quicker sugar enters the bloodstream, the more insulin is needed to rid that sugar from the bloodstream.  When high levels of insulin are present within the blood, fat burning is brought to a screeching halt, which is anything but desirable for those whose goal is just that.

4. The macronutrients present in the food ingested.  Although insulin’s primary function is to shuttle glucose (sugar) into skeletal muscle, it also carries many other nutrients to their respective storage sites; this includes fat.  Since carbohydrate ingestion stimulates a large insulin response and fat ingestion gives rise to blood lipid levels, the two, when consumed together in high levels (especially in the absence of protein), promote the greatest fat storage.

5. The timing of the meals ingested meals.  Ingesting a large amount of carbohydrates before bed spikes insulin, sabotages overnight fat burning, and increases fat storage during sleep.  On the contrary, consuming a great deal of calories early in the day does not bring about this problem; rather, these calories are likely to be used as energy to support daily activities.

As you can see, someone could be eating a relatively small amount of calories daily, but at the same time promoting a great deal of fat storage by:

1) making poor food choices
2) eating carbs and fat together in large amounts without protein, and
3) consuming meals at inopportune times

Information from Joel Marion & Josh Bezoni Founders of BioTrust Nutrition.

Dietary Guidelines for Maintaining Healthy Brain Function and Avoiding Alzheimer’s Disease 

It’s becoming increasingly clear that the same pathological process that leads to insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes may also hold true for your brain. As you over-indulge on sugar and grains, your brain becomes overwhelmed by the consistently high levels of glucose and insulin that blunts its insulin signaling, leading to impairments in your thinking and memory abilities, eventually causing permanent brain damage.

Additionally, when your liver is busy processing fructose (which your liver turns into fat), it severely hampers its ability to make cholesterol, an essential building block of your brain that is crucial for optimal brain function. Indeed, mounting evidence supports the notion that significantly reducing fructose consumption is a very important step for preventing Alzheimer’s disease.

Because of the very limited treatments, and no available cure as of yet, you’re really left with just one solid solution, and that is to prevent Alzheimer’s from happening to you in the first place. Dr. David Perlmutter, the author of the book Grain Brain, explains that Alzheimer’s is a disease predicated primarily on lifestyle choices; the two main culprits being excessive sugar and gluten consumption.

• Avoid sugar and refined fructose. Ideally, you’ll want to keep your total sugar and fructose below 25 grams per day, or as low as 15 grams per day if you have insulin resistance or any related disorders. In one recent animal study, a junk food diet high in sugar resulted in impaired memory after just one week! As a general rule, you’ll want to keep your fasting insulin levels below 3, and this is indirectly related to fructose, as it will clearly lead to insulin resistance.

• Avoid gluten and casein (primarily wheat and pasteurized dairy, but not dairy fat, such as butter). Research shows that your blood-brain barrier, the barrier that keeps things out of your brain where they don’t belong, is negatively affected by gluten. Gluten also makes your gut more permeable, which allows proteins to get into your bloodstream, where they don’t belong. That then sensitizes your immune system and promotes inflammation and autoimmunity, both of which play a role in the development of Alzheimer’s.

• Eat a nutritious diet, rich in folate, such as the one described in my nutrition plan. Vegetables, without question, are your best form of folate, and we should all eat plenty of fresh raw veggies every day. Avoid supplements like folic acid, which is the inferior synthetic version of folate.

• Increase consumption of all healthful fats, including animal-based omega-3. Beneficial health-promoting fats that your brain needs for optimal function include organic butter from raw milk, clarified butter called ghee, organic grass fed raw butter, olives, organic virgin olive oil and coconut oil, nuts like pecans and macadamia, free-range eggs, wild Alaskan salmon, and avocado. Also make sure you’re getting enough animal-based omega-3 fats, such as krill oil. High intake of the omega-3 fats EPA and DHA help by preventing cell damage caused by Alzheimer’s disease, thereby slowing down its progression, and lowering your risk of developing the disorder.

• Optimize your gut flora by regularly eating fermented foods or taking a high-potency and high-quality probiotic supplement
• Eat blueberries. Wild blueberries, which have high anthocyanin and antioxidant content, are known to guard against Alzheimer’s and other neurological diseases.

Source: Dr. Mercola.com