Guest guest Posted February 10, 2005 Report Share Posted February 10, 2005 Hi Emmanuel, I tend to give some degree of credit to the Blood type diet system. Therefore it is possible that we have 'one man's meat is another man's poison's, and that there is no one size fits all when it comes to the issue of good and bad food choices (except for the choice of highly processed foods). At this stage I am not even factoring in psycho-emotional influences that may be also dictating physiological reactions. So if statin drugs are deemed the answer to high cholesterol levels, which is where this started my questioning, I have wanted to look to the causative aspect. Which brought in the notion of fat as a fuel source and insulin being a culprit or more accurately insulin resistance, hence.... I strongly recommend reading... http://www.mercola.com/2001/jul/14/insulin.htm# which is..... Insulin and Its Metabolic Effects Part 1 of 4 (Part 2, Part 3, Part 4) By Ron Rosedale, M.D. Presented at Designs for Health Institute's BoulderFest, August 1999 Seminar .... Ron Rosedale's writings make a lot sense to me. This is about a 28 page paper. Perhaps you have already reviewed it. My own summary thus far in really simple terms is this.... Historically humans feasted and famined their way through history. At times they would overwork their pancreatic function of insulin and store excess blood sugar as fat. This would have been in times of feast. Then, they would have naturally gone through a time of famine where they would have burned fat and protein as their main fuel source. This would have rested the pancrease and also resensitised the cells to the effects of insulin. Today where I live we do not follow this cycle of famine and feast. In fact we go from feast to feast. Within weeks of Christmas being over the Easter eggs are flooding the supermarkets. And unlike when I was child where we had one little chocolate Easter egg on Easter Sunday, people gorge themselves on chocolate for weeks. For some Easter with its preceding Lent is a Spring time of food absence and perhaps a Spring cleaning for the body as much as a religious significant exercise. However, today add to this food excess a deficiency of physical exercise and excess of mental stress, our prehistoric physiology is having difficulty staying well. Not to mention the combination of plastic type foods such as margarine or the fatal combination of potato cooked in repeatedly super heated hydrogenated fat. Or the assortment of rancid fat used in many food processors. So few meals are cooked fresh from scratch with in-season foods. So I think perhaps we should imitate the past and create shortages especially of high sugar loaded diets, and if it aint a fat or a protein its a carbohydrate. And broccoli is certainly a different kind of carb to French fries. I also think we need nutritional shortages in order for the body to better absorb them, rules of supply and demand. I think we need a spring flush and an Indian summer of bountiful produce and a winter of root vegetables etc. Giving the body daily its allotted allowance of nutrients year around is imo, counter productive to absorption. I think different bodies have different nutritional needs, people in tropics get lots Vit D from the sun, in the colder regions they use to absorb the Vit D from milk... so what I want for a person I treat is to find the theories that guide me and them to better health without having to have only one truth about food choices that are good and bad. In this I have found many people have a great deal of difficulty in handling grains. Also after decades of low fat foods and high starchy carbohydrates we see lots of insulin resistance, lots of diabetes and what is really scary is that diabetes once an old person's disease is not prevalent in school age children along with increasing rates of obesity. Something is really wrong with this picture! Best wishes, Emmanuel Segmen [susegmen] Thursday, 10 February 2005 10:00 AM Chinese Medicine Re: Statin drugs wrote > The problem with plaque in the arteries is due to the adherence of excess insulin which makes theme sticky and attracts the cholesterol. > Hi Sharon, When I teach nutrition biochemistry at Merritt College, I hand out the following review paper to help people get a grip on the chemistry of how arterial plaque forms. See: http://www.cardiab.com/content/1/1/1 Dr. Mercola sometimes has fuzzy descriptions of things (his heart is in the right place), yet you seem to be on the right track. Hyperglycemia causes glucose to bind to LDLs in situ in arterial walls in a reversible reaction (only reversible for awhile). Recall from you physiology classes that the fate of LDLs is to end up in plaque, while HDLs may be taken up by liver receptors unless blocked by saturated fats. My apologies to those who love saturated fats. (Read 1975 NEJM, an August issue, Goldstein and Brown, can't recall more specifically off hand.) HDLs can scavenge cholesterol from circulating LDLs as well as from those in the early plaque formations. However, after weeks or months of hyperglycemia the glucose binding becomes permanent in what is (amusingly) called AGEs, advanced glycosylated end-products. So ... people with insulin resistance (which you described nicely) along with hyperglycemia tend to age faster ... develop more AGEs. My reading of the clinical and scientific literature brings me to the conclusion that complex carbohydrates provides the necessary soluble and insoluble fiber that helps most in a healthy diet. I do not find the literature on fat supplements to be compelling. I do find Dr. Dean Ornish's clinical papers to be compelling. His papers are better than his books, in my opinion. Part of studying and teaching nutritional biochemistry for eighteen years has caused me to review the literature many times back as far as the 1960s. While I would not use supplements of various fats, I also would not completely eliminate small amounts of well-selected meat and fish from the diet. They are so helpful in building a soup consisting of a wide variety of vegetables, mushrooms, so on. You get to have nutrients dissolving into both water and lipid phases. My apologies for sounding too much like a chemist. Also my HDL liver receptors are the opposite of Alon's. Something about being Bulgarian I'm told. I have high HDLs with total cholesterol in the 120s. So if Alon can lower his cholesterol, I recommend that we pay close attention. Happy First Day to All. Respectfully, Emmanuel Segmen http://babel.altavista.com/ and adjust accordingly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted February 10, 2005 Report Share Posted February 10, 2005 Hi Sharon, Most of what you have said I feel is quite inspired. However, I can't honor any of Peter D'Adamo's blood type diet presentation. I hope you'll forgive me. I'm a pretty standard Western scientist and nutrition/physiology/anatomy instructor. I own some of D'Adamo's books and have tried to assess his claims and his bibliographic sources, but all to no avail. There's no Western science that I can find that supports any of his notions. I do like your Dr. Mercola reference despite his long winded and excited presentation. He does at least present in layman's terms the notion of insulin resistance which is quite valuable. He's pretty fuzzy in his understanding of how insulin works, but I think it doesn't matter because he does such a good job of getting people to understand insulin resistance. I'm somewhat appalled by his willingness to use the Atkins diet for even brief intervals. But, hey, I teach nutrition at public colleges in northern California. The literature and clinical etiologies regarding diet and nutrition are utterly available and fairly unchanged in perspective for the past forty years. Increase complex carbohydrates while maintaining low fat and animal protein. The newest fundamentals to come into our teaching is exercise and adequate sleep. Like you, Sharon, I would add a bit of biological hunger to the mix. Beyond that I like your comments about broccoli (a personal favorite) and, again, actually experiencing hunger. Eating to less than 75% of capacity is a great practice along with one fast day per week or at least per month. Statins, again, are what Merck's researchers at UCLA found from Chinese medicine while not even looking at the standard formulas used for lowering cholesterol. The presece of cholesterol in LDLs or HDLs is pretty standard science. Making more HDLs is about aerobic fitness and good liver health. Obviously reducing dietary cholesterol and fats is the main exogenous thing we can do along with increasing aerobic fitness. Aerobic fitness causes the liver to encapsulate cholesterol more in HDLs and less in LDLs. That's overly simplistic, but still fundamental. How Chinese medical formulas reduce cholesterol in terms of Western science mechanisms is unknown as far as I know. I do think it's important to bear in mind that successful treatment of high cholesterol began with TCM herbal formulas and was published in Chinese journals showing good outcomes in the early 1990s. I've seen bibliographies of such journals that are sadly unreadable by me. That got Merck's attention and got them to fund research to find functional molecules ... hence, statins. I would add Dr. Denise Faustman to your reading list. Someone posted a NY Times article about her on this site recently. I admire Dr. Faustman as a great scientist. I hope she wins a Nobel prize in medicine one day for accomplishing a cure for diabetes in animal models ... without the use of transplanted stem cells. I can only visit this site about once per week. So I must get back to the regular synchronicity of life. Thank you for the lovely exchange. Respectfully, Emmanuel Segmen Chinese Medicine , wrote: > Hi Emmanuel, > > I tend to give some degree of credit to the Blood type diet system. > > Therefore it is possible that we have 'one man's meat is another man's poison's, and that there is no one size fits all when it comes to the issue of good and bad food choices (except for the choice of highly processed foods). At this stage I am not even factoring in psycho-emotional influences that may be also dictating physiological reactions. > > So if statin drugs are deemed the answer to high cholesterol levels, which is where this started my questioning, I have wanted to look to the causative aspect. Which brought in the notion of fat as a fuel source and insulin being a culprit or more accurately insulin resistance, hence.... > > I strongly recommend reading... > http://www.mercola.com/2001/jul/14/insulin.htm# which is..... > Insulin and Its Metabolic Effects > Part 1 of 4 (Part 2, Part 3, Part 4) > > By Ron Rosedale, M.D. > > Presented at Designs for Health Institute's BoulderFest, August 1999 Seminar > > ... Ron Rosedale's writings make a lot sense to me. This is about a 28 page > paper. > > Perhaps you have already reviewed it. > > My own summary thus far in really simple terms is this.... > > Historically humans feasted and famined their way through history. At times they would overwork their pancreatic function of insulin and store excess blood sugar as fat. This would have been in times of feast. > > Then, they would have naturally gone through a time of famine where they would have burned fat and protein as their main fuel source. This would have rested the pancrease and also resensitised the cells to the effects of insulin. > > Today where I live we do not follow this cycle of famine and feast. In fact we go from feast to feast. Within weeks of Christmas being over the Easter eggs are flooding the supermarkets. And unlike when I was child where we had one little chocolate Easter egg on Easter Sunday, people gorge themselves on chocolate for weeks. For some Easter with its preceding Lent is a Spring time of food absence and perhaps a Spring cleaning for the body as much as a religious significant exercise. > > However, today add to this food excess a deficiency of physical exercise and excess of mental stress, our prehistoric physiology is having difficulty staying well. Not to mention the combination of plastic type foods such as margarine or the fatal combination of potato cooked in repeatedly super heated hydrogenated fat. Or the assortment of rancid fat used in many food processors. So few meals are cooked fresh from scratch with in-season foods. > > So I think perhaps we should imitate the past and create shortages > especially of high sugar loaded diets, and if it aint a fat or a protein its a carbohydrate. And broccoli is certainly a different kind of carb to French fries. > > I also think we need nutritional shortages in order for the body to better absorb them, rules of supply and demand. I think we need a spring flush and an Indian summer of bountiful produce and a winter of root vegetables etc. > Giving the body daily its allotted allowance of nutrients year around is imo, counter productive to absorption. I think different bodies have different nutritional needs, people in tropics get lots Vit D from the sun, in the colder regions they use to absorb the Vit D from milk... so what I want for a person I treat is to find the theories that guide me and them to better health without having to have only one truth about food choices that are good and bad. In this I have found many people have a great deal of difficulty in handling grains. Also after decades of low fat foods and high starchy carbohydrates we see lots of insulin resistance, lots of diabetes and what is really scary is that diabetes once an old person's disease is not prevalent in school age children along with increasing rates of obesity. > > Something is really wrong with this picture! > > Best wishes, > > > > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted February 10, 2005 Report Share Posted February 10, 2005 Emmanuel, Perhaps you can explain this to me. If one has insulin resistance why would you continue to eat a predominance of carbohydrate? Why not use a fuel source the body can't handle? One should also be aware that insulin does far more than clear the blood of sugar. For instance it also gathers the magnesium and no magnesium is going to mean high blood pressure. If a mother has insulin resistance when pregnant she passes this on, not genetically but environmentally to her foetus. No wonder type II diabetes is now in young kids under the age of 10. Humans didn't cultivate grains until quite late in our history. And certainly did not eat them in the volume currently recommended or with present day processing and not with the multitude of chemicals and sugar that is added routinely. We certainly didn't eat the main staples of wheat, rice, and corn that are found today; there were many more varieties of grains and cereals for those tribes that farmed. Australian aboriginals still living a traditional life have very few carb's in their diet and did not cultivate grains. The did gather some seeds from acacia trees and make a kind of flour. Many traditional tribes around the world have a similar story to tell of diet. Finally I just can't accept bringing one's health down to a cholesterol number. Life is so much more than a statistical number. Best wishes, Emmanuel Segmen [susegmen] Thursday, 10 February 2005 3:06 PM Chinese Medicine Re: Statin drugs, fats and insulin Hi Sharon, Most of what you have said I feel is quite inspired. However, I can't honor any of Peter D'Adamo's blood type diet presentation. I hope you'll forgive me. I'm a pretty standard Western scientist and nutrition/physiology/anatomy instructor. I own some of D'Adamo's books and have tried to assess his claims and his bibliographic sources, but all to no avail. There's no Western science that I can find that supports any of his notions. I do like your Dr. Mercola reference despite his long winded and excited presentation. He does at least present in layman's terms the notion of insulin resistance which is quite valuable. He's pretty fuzzy in his understanding of how insulin works, but I think it doesn't matter because he does such a good job of getting people to understand insulin resistance. I'm somewhat appalled by his willingness to use the Atkins diet for even brief intervals. But, hey, I teach nutrition at public colleges in northern California. The literature and clinical etiologies regarding diet and nutrition are utterly available and fairly unchanged in perspective for the past forty years. Increase complex carbohydrates while maintaining low fat and animal protein. The newest fundamentals to come into our teaching is exercise and adequate sleep. Like you, Sharon, I would add a bit of biological hunger to the mix. Beyond that I like your comments about broccoli (a personal favorite) and, again, actually experiencing hunger. Eating to less than 75% of capacity is a great practice along with one fast day per week or at least per month. Statins, again, are what Merck's researchers at UCLA found from Chinese medicine while not even looking at the standard formulas used for lowering cholesterol. The presece of cholesterol in LDLs or HDLs is pretty standard science. Making more HDLs is about aerobic fitness and good liver health. Obviously reducing dietary cholesterol and fats is the main exogenous thing we can do along with increasing aerobic fitness. Aerobic fitness causes the liver to encapsulate cholesterol more in HDLs and less in LDLs. That's overly simplistic, but still fundamental. How Chinese medical formulas reduce cholesterol in terms of Western science mechanisms is unknown as far as I know. I do think it's important to bear in mind that successful treatment of high cholesterol began with TCM herbal formulas and was published in Chinese journals showing good outcomes in the early 1990s. I've seen bibliographies of such journals that are sadly unreadable by me. That got Merck's attention and got them to fund research to find functional molecules ... hence, statins. I would add Dr. Denise Faustman to your reading list. Someone posted a NY Times article about her on this site recently. I admire Dr. Faustman as a great scientist. I hope she wins a Nobel prize in medicine one day for accomplishing a cure for diabetes in animal models ... without the use of transplanted stem cells. I can only visit this site about once per week. So I must get back to the regular synchronicity of life. Thank you for the lovely exchange. Respectfully, Emmanuel Segmen Chinese Medicine , wrote: > Hi Emmanuel, > > I tend to give some degree of credit to the Blood type diet system. > > Therefore it is possible that we have 'one man's meat is another man's poison's, and that there is no one size fits all when it comes to the issue of good and bad food choices (except for the choice of highly processed foods). At this stage I am not even factoring in psycho-emotional influences that may be also dictating physiological reactions. > > So if statin drugs are deemed the answer to high cholesterol levels, which is where this started my questioning, I have wanted to look to the causative aspect. Which brought in the notion of fat as a fuel source and insulin being a culprit or more accurately insulin resistance, hence.... > > I strongly recommend reading... > http://www.mercola.com/2001/jul/14/insulin.htm# which is..... > Insulin and Its Metabolic Effects > Part 1 of 4 (Part 2, Part 3, Part 4) > > By Ron Rosedale, M.D. > > Presented at Designs for Health Institute's BoulderFest, August 1999 Seminar > > ... Ron Rosedale's writings make a lot sense to me. This is about a 28 page > paper. > > Perhaps you have already reviewed it. > > My own summary thus far in really simple terms is this.... > > Historically humans feasted and famined their way through history. At times they would overwork their pancreatic function of insulin and store excess blood sugar as fat. This would have been in times of feast. > > Then, they would have naturally gone through a time of famine where they would have burned fat and protein as their main fuel source. This would have rested the pancrease and also resensitised the cells to the effects of insulin. > > Today where I live we do not follow this cycle of famine and feast. In fact we go from feast to feast. Within weeks of Christmas being over the Easter eggs are flooding the supermarkets. And unlike when I was child where we had one little chocolate Easter egg on Easter Sunday, people gorge themselves on chocolate for weeks. For some Easter with its preceding Lent is a Spring time of food absence and perhaps a Spring cleaning for the body as much as a religious significant exercise. > > However, today add to this food excess a deficiency of physical exercise and excess of mental stress, our prehistoric physiology is having difficulty staying well. Not to mention the combination of plastic type foods such as margarine or the fatal combination of potato cooked in repeatedly super heated hydrogenated fat. Or the assortment of rancid fat used in many food processors. So few meals are cooked fresh from scratch with in-season foods. > > So I think perhaps we should imitate the past and create shortages > especially of high sugar loaded diets, and if it aint a fat or a protein its a carbohydrate. And broccoli is certainly a different kind of carb to French fries. > > I also think we need nutritional shortages in order for the body to better absorb them, rules of supply and demand. I think we need a spring flush and an Indian summer of bountiful produce and a winter of root vegetables etc. > Giving the body daily its allotted allowance of nutrients year around is imo, counter productive to absorption. I think different bodies have different nutritional needs, people in tropics get lots Vit D from the sun, in the colder regions they use to absorb the Vit D from milk... so what I want for a person I treat is to find the theories that guide me and them to better health without having to have only one truth about food choices that are good and bad. In this I have found many people have a great deal of difficulty in handling grains. Also after decades of low fat foods and high starchy carbohydrates we see lots of insulin resistance, lots of diabetes and what is really scary is that diabetes once an old person's disease is not prevalent in school age children along with increasing rates of obesity. > > Something is really wrong with this picture! > > Best wishes, > > > > http://babel.altavista.com/ and adjust accordingly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted February 10, 2005 Report Share Posted February 10, 2005 Carbs are not the only contributing factor to modern diabetes. Another one is vaccines. And another is the low consumption of active enzymes from foods. Dr. Barry Sears discusses a deeper concept of why this happens and also how to reverse it clinically. Apparently, the ratio of good to bad eicosonoids is thrown off leading to resistance and breakdown. Carbs are the fuel that the body uses most to run yet few seem to understand that these are found in veggies and fruits as well. There are many problems with overly simplification or naming grains as bad. Man has changed their genes, sprayed them with toxic chemicals, etc. Grains and seeds have been a large part of many traditional cultures but then again they also had more diversity and ate locally grown and ripened foods. Getting back to nature would be best for a healthier life. Mike W. Bowser, L Ac > <> >Chinese Medicine ><Chinese Medicine > >RE: Re: Statin drugs, fats and insulin >Thu, 10 Feb 2005 22:34:11 +1000 > >Emmanuel, >Perhaps you can explain this to me. >If one has insulin resistance why would you continue to eat a predominance >of carbohydrate? > >Why not use a fuel source the body can't handle? One should also be aware >that insulin does far more than clear the blood of sugar. For instance it >also gathers the magnesium and no magnesium is going to mean high blood >pressure. > >If a mother has insulin resistance when pregnant she passes this on, not >genetically but environmentally to her foetus. No wonder type II diabetes >is now in young kids under the age of 10. > >Humans didn't cultivate grains until quite late in our history. And >certainly did not eat them in the volume currently recommended or with >present day processing and not with the multitude of chemicals and sugar >that is added routinely. We certainly didn't eat the main staples of >wheat, >rice, and corn that are found today; there were many more varieties of >grains and cereals for those tribes that farmed. > >Australian aboriginals still living a traditional life have very few carb's >in their diet and did not cultivate grains. The did gather some seeds from >acacia trees and make a kind of flour. Many traditional tribes around the >world have a similar story to tell of diet. > >Finally I just can't accept bringing one's health down to a cholesterol >number. Life is so much more than a statistical number. >Best wishes, > > > > Emmanuel Segmen [susegmen] > Thursday, 10 February 2005 3:06 PM > Chinese Medicine > Re: Statin drugs, fats and insulin > > > > Hi Sharon, > > Most of what you have said I feel is quite inspired. However, I > can't honor any of Peter D'Adamo's blood type diet presentation. I > hope you'll forgive me. I'm a pretty standard Western scientist and > nutrition/physiology/anatomy instructor. I own some of D'Adamo's > books and have tried to assess his claims and his bibliographic > sources, but all to no avail. There's no Western science that I can > find that supports any of his notions. > > I do like your Dr. Mercola reference despite his long winded and > excited presentation. He does at least present in layman's terms the > notion of insulin resistance which is quite valuable. He's pretty > fuzzy in his understanding of how insulin works, but I think it > doesn't matter because he does such a good job of getting people to > understand insulin resistance. I'm somewhat appalled by his > willingness to use the Atkins diet for even brief intervals. But, > hey, I teach nutrition at public colleges in northern California. > The literature and clinical etiologies regarding diet and nutrition > are utterly available and fairly unchanged in perspective for the > past forty years. Increase complex carbohydrates while maintaining > low fat and animal protein. The newest fundamentals to come into our > teaching is exercise and adequate sleep. Like you, Sharon, I would > add a bit of biological hunger to the mix. > > Beyond that I like your comments about broccoli (a personal favorite) > and, again, actually experiencing hunger. Eating to less than 75% of > capacity is a great practice along with one fast day per week or at > least per month. > > Statins, again, are what Merck's researchers at UCLA found from > Chinese medicine while not even looking at the standard formulas used > for lowering cholesterol. The presece of cholesterol in LDLs or HDLs > is pretty standard science. Making more HDLs is about aerobic > fitness and good liver health. Obviously reducing dietary > cholesterol and fats is the main exogenous thing we can do along with > increasing aerobic fitness. Aerobic fitness causes the liver to > encapsulate cholesterol more in HDLs and less in LDLs. That's overly > simplistic, but still fundamental. How Chinese medical formulas > reduce cholesterol in terms of Western science mechanisms is unknown > as far as I know. I do think it's important to bear in mind that > successful treatment of high cholesterol began with TCM herbal > formulas and was published in Chinese journals showing good outcomes > in the early 1990s. I've seen bibliographies of such journals that > are sadly unreadable by me. That got Merck's attention and got them > to fund research to find functional molecules ... hence, statins. > > I would add Dr. Denise Faustman to your reading list. Someone posted > a NY Times article about her on this site recently. I admire Dr. > Faustman as a great scientist. I hope she wins a Nobel prize in > medicine one day for accomplishing a cure for diabetes in animal > models ... without the use of transplanted stem cells. > > I can only visit this site about once per week. So I must get back > to the regular synchronicity of life. Thank you for the lovely > exchange. > > Respectfully, > Emmanuel Segmen > > > > > Chinese Medicine , > wrote: > > Hi Emmanuel, > > > > I tend to give some degree of credit to the Blood type diet system. > > > > Therefore it is possible that we have 'one man's meat is another > man's poison's, and that there is no one size fits all when it comes > to the issue of good and bad food choices (except for the choice of > highly processed foods). At this stage I am not even factoring in > psycho-emotional influences that may be also dictating physiological > reactions. > > > > So if statin drugs are deemed the answer to high cholesterol > levels, which is where this started my questioning, I have wanted to > look to the causative aspect. Which brought in the notion of fat as > a fuel source and insulin being a culprit or more accurately insulin > resistance, hence.... > > > > I strongly recommend reading... > > http://www.mercola.com/2001/jul/14/insulin.htm# which is..... > > Insulin and Its Metabolic Effects > > Part 1 of 4 (Part 2, Part 3, Part 4) > > > > By Ron Rosedale, M.D. > > > > Presented at Designs for Health Institute's BoulderFest, August > 1999 Seminar > > > > ... Ron Rosedale's writings make a lot sense to me. This is about > a 28 page > > paper. > > > > Perhaps you have already reviewed it. > > > > My own summary thus far in really simple terms is this.... > > > > Historically humans feasted and famined their way through history. > At times they would overwork their pancreatic function of insulin and > store excess blood sugar as fat. This would have been in times of > feast. > > > > Then, they would have naturally gone through a time of famine where > they would have burned fat and protein as their main fuel source. > This would have rested the pancrease and also resensitised the cells > to the effects of insulin. > > > > Today where I live we do not follow this cycle of famine and > feast. In fact we go from feast to feast. Within weeks of Christmas > being over the Easter eggs are flooding the supermarkets. And unlike > when I was child where we had one little chocolate Easter egg on > Easter Sunday, people gorge themselves on chocolate for weeks. For > some Easter with its preceding Lent is a Spring time of food absence > and perhaps a Spring cleaning for the body as much as a religious > significant exercise. > > > > However, today add to this food excess a deficiency of physical > exercise and excess of mental stress, our prehistoric physiology is > having difficulty staying well. Not to mention the combination of > plastic type foods such as margarine or the fatal combination of > potato cooked in repeatedly super heated hydrogenated fat. Or the > assortment of rancid fat used in many food processors. So few meals > are cooked fresh from scratch with in-season foods. > > > > So I think perhaps we should imitate the past and create shortages > > especially of high sugar loaded diets, and if it aint a fat or a > protein its a carbohydrate. And broccoli is certainly a different > kind of carb to French fries. > > > > I also think we need nutritional shortages in order for the body to > better absorb them, rules of supply and demand. I think we need a > spring flush and an Indian summer of bountiful produce and a winter > of root vegetables etc. > > Giving the body daily its allotted allowance of nutrients year > around is imo, counter productive to absorption. I think different > bodies have different nutritional needs, people in tropics get lots > Vit D from the sun, in the colder regions they use to absorb the Vit > D from milk... so what I want for a person I treat is to find the > theories that guide me and them to better health without having to > have only one truth about food choices that are good and bad. In > this I have found many people have a great deal of difficulty in > handling grains. Also after decades of low fat foods and high > starchy carbohydrates we see lots of insulin resistance, lots of > diabetes and what is really scary is that diabetes once an old > person's disease is not prevalent in school age children along with > increasing rates of obesity. > > > > Something is really wrong with this picture! > > > > Best wishes, > > > > > > > >http://babel.altavista.com/ > > > and adjust >accordingly. > > Messages are the property of the author. Any duplication outside the >group >requires prior permission from the author. > > If you are a TCM academic and wish to discuss TCM with other academics, > > > > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted February 10, 2005 Report Share Posted February 10, 2005 Sharon wrote: > Emmanuel, > Perhaps you can explain this to me. > If one has insulin resistance why would you continue to eat a predominance > of carbohydrate? Hi Sharon! You have to understand the emotional and social significance of food, or certain foods. Look at the buffets offered at all the doctor's meetings, you would think no one ever heard of the current discussions in nutrition. For a real eye-opener, attend some meetings of Overeaters Anonymous! Regards, Pete Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted February 10, 2005 Report Share Posted February 10, 2005 Pete, I had one Px who I suggested try a lower starch carb diet to. He was most concerned about having to stop eating coco pops a chocolate covered puffed rice cereal. You see, his mum couldn't afford the real thing as a kid so she sprinkled drinking chocolate over his plain puffed rice. On his first paycheck as a 16 yr old he bought himself a packet of real coco pops and now in his 40's it was still significant to him. So I get that there are psychological reasons... I suppose anyone well schooled in old nutritional ideas may not want to give up the 'truths' they have taught, could be another. I recommend to Px's to make changes for a few weeks and see what happens to their symptoms. They can have a GP monitor their blood lipids if they want. Best wishes, Pete Theisen [petet] Friday, 11 February 2005 1:04 AM Chinese Medicine Re: Re: Statin drugs, fats and insulin Sharon wrote: > Emmanuel, > Perhaps you can explain this to me. > If one has insulin resistance why would you continue to eat a predominance > of carbohydrate? Hi Sharon! You have to understand the emotional and social significance of food, or certain foods. Look at the buffets offered at all the doctor's meetings, you would think no one ever heard of the current discussions in nutrition. For a real eye-opener, attend some meetings of Overeaters Anonymous! Regards, Pete http://babel.altavista.com/ and adjust accordingly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted February 11, 2005 Report Share Posted February 11, 2005 Hi Sharon, Made it back to this site briefly today. Can't stay long, but your question is a good one. I don't advocate grains, but I do advocate complex carbohydrates. That's the solution for insulin resistance. Flour from grains and easily accessible starch is the cause of hyperglycemia, subsequent insulin spikes and subsequent insulin resistance. If you're an aerobic athlete, you have no insulin resistance, so go ahead and eat bread and pasta. But I've actually dropped unprocessed grains from my diet despite being an aerobic athlete since age 14. Once I got past 45 even with my long distance running, I do better with cooked vegetables and fresh fruit. The point is to present the gastrointestinal mucosa with whole foods rather than highly concentrated (in a sense " naked " ) ingredients. Keep the clothing on the food, don't refine it. Refined starches increases the enzyme rates 1,000 fold or more, and this results in a similarly excessive spike in blood glucose. And you're right, this is not how the human body developed historically. This kind of blood glucose spike has been seen pretty recently in history. What's worse is we have been sendentary now for over half a century. And worse yet we are presented with " naked " starches in our refined fast foods and snacks. There is a simple solution, literally. It's actually easier than ever to cook a soup. The produce section at the grocery store has plenty of vegetables as well as fresh fruit. Our body is designed to " see " sodium as gold (as it once was) and to spare it in numerous ways. Our body " sees " potassium as a poison and tries to excrete it. A diet of whole foods is low in sodium and high in potassium. This is how nature presents it. We are also configured for starvation. Lots of kidney and adrenal mechanism go off when our body " sees " low sodium, high potassium or low blood pressure. The net result of renin-angiotensin/aldosterone signaling is to spare sodium and raise the blood pressure. Our modern diet has turned this human physiological configuration on its head. Now we've got hypertension from a stressful life that's low on activity and high on sodium and starchy calories. The simple solution has been espoused for lo these forty past years. Eat vegetable soup with small amounts of animal protein (or bones) along with tender green leafy vegetables and fresh fruit in season. Period. Add to that 60 minutes as day of cardiovascular exercise ... 90 minutes if you're overweight. To my students I repeat by saying, " ... per day! 60 to 90 minutes per day. " So I'm with you on a few of your most salient points. You can lose grains or eat them as wheat berries or whole berries of what ever grain. I'm old enough now to just drop them. In addition, practicing a day of fasting, meditation and rest on a regular basis is great. Or just drink soup broth for one day per week. I'm not sure what eating food that your body can't handle means. Eating less is okay. In clinical nutrition, you begin someone on clear broth post-surgery or post-trauma. And you build up from there. So in a sense, the kindest thing for your digestive system is soup, or a solution of metabolized essenial nutrients. What I've found as both a practicing clinical nutritionist and as a theoretical nutritionist is that people underestimate the importance of naturally occuring fiber, both soluble and insoluble. Solule fiber forms stools, feeds flora and is an important source of flatulence ... ;-) Insoluble fiber increases motility and cleans out the intestinal haustrae. Regarding cholesterol as a number, HDLs and LDLs are excellent diagnostic tools that tells you on average if someone is fit ... mainly it's a measure of aerobic fitness. In people who have some aspect of " familial atherosclerosis " (like Alon), then this diagnostic tool is of critical importance. If you're not in Alon's category, I'd agree with you. Relax. It's a number that reflects fitness. So go for a walk. ;-) Thanks again for a lovely exchange. I find your writing inspiring. Respectfully, Emmanuel Segmen Chinese Medicine , wrote: > Emmanuel, > Perhaps you can explain this to me. > If one has insulin resistance why would you continue to eat a predominance > of carbohydrate? > > Why not use a fuel source the body can't handle? One should also be aware > that insulin does far more than clear the blood of sugar. For instance it > also gathers the magnesium and no magnesium is going to mean high blood > pressure. > > If a mother has insulin resistance when pregnant she passes this on, not > genetically but environmentally to her foetus. No wonder type II diabetes > is now in young kids under the age of 10. > > Humans didn't cultivate grains until quite late in our history. And > certainly did not eat them in the volume currently recommended or with > present day processing and not with the multitude of chemicals and sugar > that is added routinely. We certainly didn't eat the main staples of wheat, > rice, and corn that are found today; there were many more varieties of > grains and cereals for those tribes that farmed. > > Australian aboriginals still living a traditional life have very few carb's > in their diet and did not cultivate grains. The did gather some seeds from > acacia trees and make a kind of flour. Many traditional tribes around the > world have a similar story to tell of diet. > > Finally I just can't accept bringing one's health down to a cholesterol > number. Life is so much more than a statistical number. > Best wishes, > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted February 11, 2005 Report Share Posted February 11, 2005 Hi Emmanuel, Sorry to have said " eating food that your body can't handle " ... I meant food that your body CAN handle. I don't necessarily agree with you about fasting etc. That of course would come down to many factors. I still don't agree with using sugar as the main energy source be that fruit and veg or refined grains... it all takes insulin to be carried into the cell. Of course the process of making simple sugar varies, ie the liver is the only place that fructose becomes glucose so eating a lot of fruit will demand such work by the liver. Metabolites of the grains are known to play havoc with arthritic pain etc. As far as I understand glucose as an energy source is for emergency with adrenal response, where the body is flooded with Glucocorticoids, apart from say red blood cell production which requires glucose. Long term use of glucose as the main energy source brings with it long term chronic diseases. Kids on high sugar/carb diets or adrenally stressed by lack of food intake have the most revolting behaviour problems and are more prone to adrenal responses. Repeated adrenal responses have a detrimental affect on the body's immune system etc. Species such as horses have massive capacity to store glucose and hence 'carb loading' has no advantage in the equine athlete - they are hay burners for a reason. However, an active human lacks such storage capacity for glucose and could not possibly run an average day on glucoses stored. Hence the afternoon tiredness etc with the attending hypo and hyper glacemic responses. Furthermore, some people's bodies will turn the glucose more directly into fat (probably linked to the hormone Leptin) without having the glucose carried to the mitochondria for cell energy production. Such people then become hungry quickly eat more sugar type foods ie carbs and then go through the process all over again. It maybe these people are 'faulty' or it may just be they run better on burning fat, in which case a higher fat intake will be a healthy choice for them (providing of course the type of fat). This may reflect Blood type or some other characteristics. Historically I have assumed that this mechanism of to turning glucose into fat and having sugar cravings was a way to get humans to eat excessively during the good times to store for the lean times. This is what I meant by feast famine, I did not mean to eat a restricted calorific diet, which some advocate. Perhaps it was these people who survived best with a 'sweet' tooth. I meant to avoid sugar/carbs for extended periods, have their body burn fat, and return only periodically to sugar/carbs. Hence faking a fast famine on carbs. Best wishes, Emmanuel Segmen [susegmen] Friday, 11 February 2005 10:29 AM Chinese Medicine Re: Statin drugs, fats and insulin Hi Sharon, Made it back to this site briefly today. Can't stay long, but your question is a good one. I don't advocate grains, but I do advocate complex carbohydrates. That's the solution for insulin resistance. Flour from grains and easily accessible starch is the cause of hyperglycemia, subsequent insulin spikes and subsequent insulin resistance. If you're an aerobic athlete, you have no insulin resistance, so go ahead and eat bread and pasta. But I've actually dropped unprocessed grains from my diet despite being an aerobic athlete since age 14. Once I got past 45 even with my long distance running, I do better with cooked vegetables and fresh fruit. The point is to present the gastrointestinal mucosa with whole foods rather than highly concentrated (in a sense " naked " ) ingredients. Keep the clothing on the food, don't refine it. Refined starches increases the enzyme rates 1,000 fold or more, and this results in a similarly excessive spike in blood glucose. And you're right, this is not how the human body developed historically. This kind of blood glucose spike has been seen pretty recently in history. What's worse is we have been sendentary now for over half a century. And worse yet we are presented with " naked " starches in our refined fast foods and snacks. There is a simple solution, literally. It's actually easier than ever to cook a soup. The produce section at the grocery store has plenty of vegetables as well as fresh fruit. Our body is designed to " see " sodium as gold (as it once was) and to spare it in numerous ways. Our body " sees " potassium as a poison and tries to excrete it. A diet of whole foods is low in sodium and high in potassium. This is how nature presents it. We are also configured for starvation. Lots of kidney and adrenal mechanism go off when our body " sees " low sodium, high potassium or low blood pressure. The net result of renin-angiotensin/aldosterone signaling is to spare sodium and raise the blood pressure. Our modern diet has turned this human physiological configuration on its head. Now we've got hypertension from a stressful life that's low on activity and high on sodium and starchy calories. The simple solution has been espoused for lo these forty past years. Eat vegetable soup with small amounts of animal protein (or bones) along with tender green leafy vegetables and fresh fruit in season. Period. Add to that 60 minutes as day of cardiovascular exercise ... 90 minutes if you're overweight. To my students I repeat by saying, " ... per day! 60 to 90 minutes per day. " So I'm with you on a few of your most salient points. You can lose grains or eat them as wheat berries or whole berries of what ever grain. I'm old enough now to just drop them. In addition, practicing a day of fasting, meditation and rest on a regular basis is great. Or just drink soup broth for one day per week. I'm not sure what eating food that your body can't handle means. Eating less is okay. In clinical nutrition, you begin someone on clear broth post-surgery or post-trauma. And you build up from there. So in a sense, the kindest thing for your digestive system is soup, or a solution of metabolized essenial nutrients. What I've found as both a practicing clinical nutritionist and as a theoretical nutritionist is that people underestimate the importance of naturally occuring fiber, both soluble and insoluble. Solule fiber forms stools, feeds flora and is an important source of flatulence ... ;-) Insoluble fiber increases motility and cleans out the intestinal haustrae. Regarding cholesterol as a number, HDLs and LDLs are excellent diagnostic tools that tells you on average if someone is fit ... mainly it's a measure of aerobic fitness. In people who have some aspect of " familial atherosclerosis " (like Alon), then this diagnostic tool is of critical importance. If you're not in Alon's category, I'd agree with you. Relax. It's a number that reflects fitness. So go for a walk. ;-) Thanks again for a lovely exchange. I find your writing inspiring. Respectfully, Emmanuel Segmen Chinese Medicine , wrote: > Emmanuel, > Perhaps you can explain this to me. > If one has insulin resistance why would you continue to eat a predominance > of carbohydrate? > > Why not use a fuel source the body can't handle? One should also be aware > that insulin does far more than clear the blood of sugar. For instance it > also gathers the magnesium and no magnesium is going to mean high blood > pressure. > > If a mother has insulin resistance when pregnant she passes this on, not > genetically but environmentally to her foetus. No wonder type II diabetes > is now in young kids under the age of 10. > > Humans didn't cultivate grains until quite late in our history. And > certainly did not eat them in the volume currently recommended or with > present day processing and not with the multitude of chemicals and sugar > that is added routinely. We certainly didn't eat the main staples of wheat, > rice, and corn that are found today; there were many more varieties of > grains and cereals for those tribes that farmed. > > Australian aboriginals still living a traditional life have very few carb's > in their diet and did not cultivate grains. The did gather some seeds from > acacia trees and make a kind of flour. Many traditional tribes around the > world have a similar story to tell of diet. > > Finally I just can't accept bringing one's health down to a cholesterol > number. Life is so much more than a statistical number. > Best wishes, > http://babel.altavista.com/ and adjust accordingly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted February 11, 2005 Report Share Posted February 11, 2005 Hi, Emmanuel: You wrote: " The simple solution has been espoused for lo these forty past years. Eat vegetable soup with small amounts of animal protein (or bones) along with tender green leafy vegetables and fresh fruit in season. Period. Add to that 60 minutes as day of cardiovascular exercise ... 90 minutes if you're overweight. To my students I repeat by saying, " ... per day! 60 to 90 minutes per day. " This is a great regime to follow, but I wonder how much animal protein is needed to keep healthy? What are the best types of animal protein? I've followed this for the past year, with as little meat as possible, sometimes shrimp, chicken in winter. Would like to keep animal protein to a healthy minimum, but not sure what that would be. Thanks, Jack Chinese Medicine , " Emmanuel Segmen " <susegmen@i...> wrote: > > Hi Sharon, > > Made it back to this site briefly today. Can't stay long, but your > question is a good one. > > I don't advocate grains, but I do advocate complex carbohydrates. > That's the solution for insulin resistance. Flour from grains and > easily accessible starch is the cause of hyperglycemia, subsequent > insulin spikes and subsequent insulin resistance. If you're an > aerobic athlete, you have no insulin resistance, so go ahead and eat > bread and pasta. But I've actually dropped unprocessed grains from > my diet despite being an aerobic athlete since age 14. Once I got > past 45 even with my long distance running, I do better with cooked > vegetables and fresh fruit. > > The point is to present the gastrointestinal mucosa with whole foods > rather than highly concentrated (in a sense " naked " ) ingredients. > Keep the clothing on the food, don't refine it. Refined starches > increases the enzyme rates 1,000 fold or more, and this results in a > similarly excessive spike in blood glucose. And you're right, this > is not how the human body developed historically. This kind of blood > glucose spike has been seen pretty recently in history. What's worse > is we have been sendentary now for over half a century. And worse > yet we are presented with " naked " starches in our refined fast foods > and snacks. There is a simple solution, literally. It's actually > easier than ever to cook a soup. The produce section at the grocery > store has plenty of vegetables as well as fresh fruit. > > Our body is designed to " see " sodium as gold (as it once was) and to > spare it in numerous ways. Our body " sees " potassium as a poison and > tries to excrete it. A diet of whole foods is low in sodium and high > in potassium. This is how nature presents it. We are also > configured for starvation. Lots of kidney and adrenal mechanism go > off when our body " sees " low sodium, high potassium or low blood > pressure. The net result of renin-angiotensin/aldosterone signaling > is to spare sodium and raise the blood pressure. Our modern diet has > turned this human physiological configuration on its head. Now we've > got hypertension from a stressful life that's low on activity and > high on sodium and starchy calories. > > The simple solution has been espoused for lo these forty past years. > Eat vegetable soup with small amounts of animal protein (or bones) > along with tender green leafy vegetables and fresh fruit in season. > Period. Add to that 60 minutes as day of cardiovascular exercise ... > 90 minutes if you're overweight. To my students I repeat by > saying, " ... per day! 60 to 90 minutes per day. " > > So I'm with you on a few of your most salient points. You can lose > grains or eat them as wheat berries or whole berries of what ever > grain. I'm old enough now to just drop them. In addition, > practicing a day of fasting, meditation and rest on a regular basis > is great. Or just drink soup broth for one day per week. > > I'm not sure what eating food that your body can't handle means. > Eating less is okay. In clinical nutrition, you begin someone on > clear broth post-surgery or post-trauma. And you build up from > there. So in a sense, the kindest thing for your digestive system is > soup, or a solution of metabolized essenial nutrients. > > What I've found as both a practicing clinical nutritionist and as a > theoretical nutritionist is that people underestimate the importance > of naturally occuring fiber, both soluble and insoluble. Solule > fiber forms stools, feeds flora and is an important source of > flatulence ... ;-) Insoluble fiber increases motility and cleans > out the intestinal haustrae. > > Regarding cholesterol as a number, HDLs and LDLs are excellent > diagnostic tools that tells you on average if someone is fit ... > mainly it's a measure of aerobic fitness. In people who have some > aspect of " familial atherosclerosis " (like Alon), then this > diagnostic tool is of critical importance. If you're not in Alon's > category, I'd agree with you. Relax. It's a number that reflects > fitness. So go for a walk. ;-) > > Thanks again for a lovely exchange. I find your writing inspiring. > > Respectfully, > Emmanuel Segmen > > Chinese Medicine , > wrote: > > Emmanuel, > > Perhaps you can explain this to me. > > If one has insulin resistance why would you continue to eat a > predominance > > of carbohydrate? > > > > Why not use a fuel source the body can't handle? One should also > be aware > > that insulin does far more than clear the blood of sugar. For > instance it > > also gathers the magnesium and no magnesium is going to mean high > blood > > pressure. > > > > If a mother has insulin resistance when pregnant she passes this > on, not > > genetically but environmentally to her foetus. No wonder type II > diabetes > > is now in young kids under the age of 10. > > > > Humans didn't cultivate grains until quite late in our history. And > > certainly did not eat them in the volume currently recommended or > with > > present day processing and not with the multitude of chemicals and > sugar > > that is added routinely. We certainly didn't eat the main staples > of wheat, > > rice, and corn that are found today; there were many more varieties > of > > grains and cereals for those tribes that farmed. > > > > Australian aboriginals still living a traditional life have very > few carb's > > in their diet and did not cultivate grains. The did gather some > seeds from > > acacia trees and make a kind of flour. Many traditional tribes > around the > > world have a similar story to tell of diet. > > > > Finally I just can't accept bringing one's health down to a > cholesterol > > number. Life is so much more than a statistical number. > > Best wishes, > > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted February 11, 2005 Report Share Posted February 11, 2005 Sharon, Your post below indicates to me that you have not gotten a grounding in physiology and nutrition with regard to what is insulin and what is glucose. No nutrient can be taken up without insulin. Diabetic Type I people literally starve without their insulin. Plant fiber is glucose that we can not metabolize. Fruit and vegetables that are not starchy provide nutrients without insulin spikes. Presenting refined starches to the intestine causes glucose loads in the blood that are thoussands of times that of eating whole fruits and non-starchy vegetables. Normal amounts of insulin following a low glycemic sort of diet does not confer insulin resistance. So what sort of diet are you recommending in the absence of non- starchy vegetables, fruits and small amounts of meat or fish? You state below that you believe glucose is only for " emergency " sources of energy. Nothing can be farther from the truth. Most cells in the body require glucose. Only muscle and liver tissue utilizes other nutrients. Muscle can only use fatty acids in the presence of glucose. Hence, when the muscle runs out of glycogen (a chain of glucose), the muscle can no longer metabolize fatty acids. The marathoner " hits the wall " , so to speak, at this point. Yes, you do store glucose in your liver and muscle tissue for approximate one day. What have you been reading that leads you to have the beliefs you state below? Why not just study a standard text in nutrition or even read a nutrition and metabolism chapter in a good medical physiology text? At least you'll have a starting point from which to assess the popular press as well as claims made on websites. Get a used copy of the physiology text being used at a nearby university and read the chapters on nutrition and metabolism. I can't carry on a conversation premised on the things you've stated. No place to go. But I've enjoyed it thus far nevertheless. In gratitude, Emmanuel Segmen Chinese Medicine , wrote: > Hi Emmanuel, > Sorry to have said " eating food that your body can't handle " ... I meant food > that your body CAN handle. > > I don't necessarily agree with you about fasting etc. That of course would > come down to many factors. > > I still don't agree with using sugar as the main energy source be that fruit > and veg or refined grains... it all takes insulin to be carried into the > cell. Of course the process of making simple sugar varies, ie the liver is > the only place that fructose becomes glucose so eating a lot of fruit will > demand such work by the liver. Metabolites of the grains are known to play > havoc with arthritic pain etc. > > As far as I understand glucose as an energy source is for emergency with > adrenal response, where the body is flooded with Glucocorticoids, apart from > say red blood cell production which requires glucose. Long term use of > glucose as the main energy source brings with it long term chronic diseases. > Kids on high sugar/carb diets or adrenally stressed by lack of food intake > have the most revolting behaviour problems and are more prone to adrenal > responses. Repeated adrenal responses have a detrimental affect on the > body's immune system etc. > > Species such as horses have massive capacity to store glucose and hence > 'carb loading' has no advantage in the equine athlete - they are hay burners > for a reason. However, an active human lacks such storage capacity for > glucose and could not possibly run an average day on glucoses stored. Hence > the afternoon tiredness etc with the attending hypo and hyper glacemic > responses. > > Furthermore, some people's bodies will turn the glucose more directly into > fat (probably linked to the hormone Leptin) without having the glucose > carried to the mitochondria for cell energy production. Such people then > become hungry quickly eat more sugar type foods ie carbs and then go through > the process all over again. It maybe these people are 'faulty' or it may > just be they run better on burning fat, in which case a higher fat intake > will be a healthy choice for them (providing of course the type of fat). > This may reflect Blood type or some other characteristics. > > Historically I have assumed that this mechanism of to turning glucose into > fat and having sugar cravings was a way to get humans to eat excessively > during the good times to store for the lean times. This is what I meant by > feast famine, I did not mean to eat a restricted calorific diet, which some > advocate. Perhaps it was these people who survived best with a 'sweet' > tooth. I meant to avoid sugar/carbs for extended periods, have their body > burn fat, and return only periodically to sugar/carbs. Hence faking a fast > famine on carbs. > > Best wishes, > > > > Emmanuel Segmen [susegmen@i...] > Friday, 11 February 2005 10:29 AM > Chinese Medicine > Re: Statin drugs, fats and insulin > > > > Hi Sharon, > > Made it back to this site briefly today. Can't stay long, but your > question is a good one. > > I don't advocate grains, but I do advocate complex carbohydrates. > That's the solution for insulin resistance. Flour from grains and > easily accessible starch is the cause of hyperglycemia, subsequent > insulin spikes and subsequent insulin resistance. If you're an > aerobic athlete, you have no insulin resistance, so go ahead and eat > bread and pasta. But I've actually dropped unprocessed grains from > my diet despite being an aerobic athlete since age 14. Once I got > past 45 even with my long distance running, I do better with cooked > vegetables and fresh fruit. > > The point is to present the gastrointestinal mucosa with whole foods > rather than highly concentrated (in a sense " naked " ) ingredients. > Keep the clothing on the food, don't refine it. Refined starches > increases the enzyme rates 1,000 fold or more, and this results in a > similarly excessive spike in blood glucose. And you're right, this > is not how the human body developed historically. This kind of blood > glucose spike has been seen pretty recently in history. What's worse > is we have been sendentary now for over half a century. And worse > yet we are presented with " naked " starches in our refined fast foods > and snacks. There is a simple solution, literally. It's actually > easier than ever to cook a soup. The produce section at the grocery > store has plenty of vegetables as well as fresh fruit. > > Our body is designed to " see " sodium as gold (as it once was) and to > spare it in numerous ways. Our body " sees " potassium as a poison and > tries to excrete it. A diet of whole foods is low in sodium and high > in potassium. This is how nature presents it. We are also > configured for starvation. Lots of kidney and adrenal mechanism go > off when our body " sees " low sodium, high potassium or low blood > pressure. The net result of renin-angiotensin/aldosterone signaling > is to spare sodium and raise the blood pressure. Our modern diet has > turned this human physiological configuration on its head. Now we've > got hypertension from a stressful life that's low on activity and > high on sodium and starchy calories. > > The simple solution has been espoused for lo these forty past years. > Eat vegetable soup with small amounts of animal protein (or bones) > along with tender green leafy vegetables and fresh fruit in season. > Period. Add to that 60 minutes as day of cardiovascular exercise ... > 90 minutes if you're overweight. To my students I repeat by > saying, " ... per day! 60 to 90 minutes per day. " > > So I'm with you on a few of your most salient points. You can lose > grains or eat them as wheat berries or whole berries of what ever > grain. I'm old enough now to just drop them. In addition, > practicing a day of fasting, meditation and rest on a regular basis > is great. Or just drink soup broth for one day per week. > > I'm not sure what eating food that your body can't handle means. > Eating less is okay. In clinical nutrition, you begin someone on > clear broth post-surgery or post-trauma. And you build up from > there. So in a sense, the kindest thing for your digestive system is > soup, or a solution of metabolized essenial nutrients. > > What I've found as both a practicing clinical nutritionist and as a > theoretical nutritionist is that people underestimate the importance > of naturally occuring fiber, both soluble and insoluble. Solule > fiber forms stools, feeds flora and is an important source of > flatulence ... ;-) Insoluble fiber increases motility and cleans > out the intestinal haustrae. > > Regarding cholesterol as a number, HDLs and LDLs are excellent > diagnostic tools that tells you on average if someone is fit ... > mainly it's a measure of aerobic fitness. In people who have some > aspect of " familial atherosclerosis " (like Alon), then this > diagnostic tool is of critical importance. If you're not in Alon's > category, I'd agree with you. Relax. It's a number that reflects > fitness. So go for a walk. ;-) > > Thanks again for a lovely exchange. I find your writing inspiring. > > Respectfully, > Emmanuel Segmen > > Chinese Medicine , > wrote: > > Emmanuel, > > Perhaps you can explain this to me. > > If one has insulin resistance why would you continue to eat a > predominance > > of carbohydrate? > > > > Why not use a fuel source the body can't handle? One should also > be aware > > that insulin does far more than clear the blood of sugar. For > instance it > > also gathers the magnesium and no magnesium is going to mean high > blood > > pressure. > > > > If a mother has insulin resistance when pregnant she passes this > on, not > > genetically but environmentally to her foetus. No wonder type II > diabetes > > is now in young kids under the age of 10. > > > > Humans didn't cultivate grains until quite late in our history. And > > certainly did not eat them in the volume currently recommended or > with > > present day processing and not with the multitude of chemicals and > sugar > > that is added routinely. We certainly didn't eat the main staples > of wheat, > > rice, and corn that are found today; there were many more varieties > of > > grains and cereals for those tribes that farmed. > > > > Australian aboriginals still living a traditional life have very > few carb's > > in their diet and did not cultivate grains. The did gather some > seeds from > > acacia trees and make a kind of flour. Many traditional tribes > around the > > world have a similar story to tell of diet. > > > > Finally I just can't accept bringing one's health down to a > cholesterol > > number. Life is so much more than a statistical number. > > Best wishes, > > > > > > > > To translate this message, copy and paste it into this web link page, > http://babel.altavista.com/ > > > and adjust > accordingly. > > Messages are the property of the author. Any duplication outside the group > requires prior permission from the author. > > If you are a TCM academic and wish to discuss TCM with other academics, > > > > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted February 11, 2005 Report Share Posted February 11, 2005 Sharon, I just went to www.mercola.com and read his nutrional health plan (specifically http://www.mercola.com/nutritionplan/). I now get where you are coming from. I offer you my apologies as well as my condolences. I still recommend that you pick up some standard textbooks in nutrition and physiology. A few seeds planted today may have effects in years to come. In years past Dr. Mercola was a bit fuzzy and ungrounded in his presentation, but mostly benign. Things have changed considerably in the intervening years. We can talk offlist about anything further. I don't want to spam the group. All the Best, Emmanuel Segmen Chinese Medicine , " Emmanuel Segmen " <susegmen@i...> wrote: > > > Sharon, > > Your post below indicates to me that you have not gotten a grounding in physiology and nutrition with regard to what is insulin and what is glucose. > > No nutrient can be taken up without insulin. Diabetic Type I people literally starve without their insulin. > > Plant fiber is glucose that we can not metabolize. Fruit and > vegetables that are not starchy provide nutrients without insulin > spikes. Presenting refined starches to the intestine causes glucose loads in the blood that are thoussands of times that of eating whole fruits and non-starchy vegetables. Normal amounts of insulin following a low glycemic sort of diet does not confer insulin > resistance. > > So what sort of diet are you recommending in the absence of non- > starchy vegetables, fruits and small amounts of meat or fish? > > You state below that you believe glucose is only for " emergency " > sources of energy. Nothing can be farther from the truth. Most > cells in the body require glucose. Only muscle and liver tissue > utilizes other nutrients. Muscle can only use fatty acids in the > presence of glucose. Hence, when the muscle runs out of glycogen (a chain of glucose), the muscle can no longer metabolize fatty acids. The marathoner " hits the wall " , so to speak, at this point. Yes, you do store glucose in your liver and muscle tissue for approximate one day. > > What have you been reading that leads you to have the beliefs you > state below? Why not just study a standard text in nutrition or even read a nutrition and metabolism chapter in a good medical physiology text? At least you'll have a starting point from which to assess the popular press as well as claims made on websites. Get a used copy of the physiology text being used at a nearby university and read the chapters on nutrition and metabolism. > > I can't carry on a conversation premised on the things you've > stated. No place to go. But I've enjoyed it thus far nevertheless. > > In gratitude, > Emmanuel Segmen > > Chinese Medicine , > wrote: > > Hi Emmanuel, > > Sorry to have said " eating food that your body can't handle " ... I > meant food that your body CAN handle. > > > > I don't necessarily agree with you about fasting etc. That of > course would come down to many factors. > > > > I still don't agree with using sugar as the main energy source be > that fruit and veg or refined grains... it all takes insulin to be carried into the cell. Of course the process of making simple sugar varies, ie the liver is the only place that fructose becomes glucose so eating a lot of fruit will demand such work by the liver. Metabolites of the grains are known to play havoc with arthritic pain etc. > > > > As far as I understand glucose as an energy source is for emergency with adrenal response, where the body is flooded with Glucocorticoids, apart from say red blood cell production which requires glucose. Long term use of glucose as the main energy source brings with it long term chronic diseases. > > Kids on high sugar/carb diets or adrenally stressed by lack of food intake have the most revolting behaviour problems and are more prone to adrenal responses. Repeated adrenal responses have a detrimental affect on the body's immune system etc. > > > > Species such as horses have massive capacity to store glucose and > hence 'carb loading' has no advantage in the equine athlete - they are hay burners for a reason. However, an active human lacks such storage capacity for glucose and could not possibly run an average day on glucoses stored. Hence the afternoon tiredness etc with the attending hypo and hyper glacemic responses. > > > > Furthermore, some people's bodies will turn the glucose more > directly into fat (probably linked to the hormone Leptin) without having the glucose carried to the mitochondria for cell energy production. Such people then become hungry quickly eat more sugar type foods ie carbs and then go through the process all over again. It maybe these people are 'faulty' or it may just be they run better on burning fat, in which case a higher fat intake will be a healthy choice for them (providing of course the type of fat). > > This may reflect Blood type or some other characteristics. > > > > Historically I have assumed that this mechanism of to turning > glucose into fat and having sugar cravings was a way to get humans to eat excessively during the good times to store for the lean times. This is what I meant by feast famine, I did not mean to eat a restricted calorific diet, which some advocate. Perhaps it was these people who survived best with a 'sweet'tooth. I meant to avoid sugar/carbs for extended periods, have their body burn fat, and return only periodically to sugar/carbs. Hence faking a fast > > famine on carbs. > > > > Best wishes, > > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted February 11, 2005 Report Share Posted February 11, 2005 Emmanuel, I will strive to make myself clear. The Krebs cycle takes place inside the mitochondria which is inside the cell. Proteins, Carbohydrates and Lipids all have biochemical pathways to break them down into Acetyl Co enzyme A to fed into the Krebs cycle. The Krebs cycle is the basic energy system of the cell and collectively the body. Zoom outside the cell and see glucose in the blood. In order for the glucose to get inside the cell insulin is required to piggy back it through the cell wall. No insulin means that the glucose can't even get to first base - it can't get inside the cell. Insulin is a Polypeptide Hormone released by the Beta Cells of the Islets of Langerhans in the Pancreas - Pancreatic Juice is the carrier vehicle for Insulin. When insulin resistance is present the Pancreas increases its production. However, we have a Catch 22, the more any hormone is present the less responsive are our body tissues to it. So more and more is required for less and less affect. I assume this continues until the Islets of Langerhans are exhausted and are no longer able to produce insulin or alternatively until the cells are resensitised to insulin by its absence or low levels and once again respond to small amounts of insulin. So we have three redundant body fuelling systems and I assume we are suppose to use all of them. Potentially some genetic lines of people will probably favour one system over another depending on the environments they have come through. And so it is that we see those who like their animal fats and proteins and those that like their plant matter. None superior to another unless you have a physical of philosophical preference for one over the other. So my comments where: 1. We are unable to store enough glucose as glycogen to meet our energy needs for an active day. 2. A carbohydrate dominate diet will require insulin fairly constantly. i. This can lead to hypo and hyper glycemic responses. ii. This can lead to insulin resistance. iii. Insulin resistance leads to a multiple of chronic degenerative illnesses 3. Glucose as part of an adrenal response - it immediate increases energy availability... and my understanding is, it is not meant to be a our main fuel source although for many they eat this way, fruit juice, toast and cereal for breakfast, morning and afternoon tea cookie / donut/ fruit, sandwich for lunch, vegetables ie greens and starchy veg for dinner +/- protein from meat/pulses/lentils/nuts etc.. The lack of food for breakfast can cause an adrenal response which repeatedly is a health hazard. 4. Some people turn their glucose more readily into fat than into the Krebs cycle energy production and the low blood sugar levels in turn stimulates the craving for more carbohydrate, where as, burning fat gives a constant level of energy production. In the last 20-30 years fat consumption has been seen as the culprit, especially saturated fats, for heart disease. However, heart disease was hardly known until the early 1900's. So what happened 15 years before this to start the rise in heart disease? Atkins postulates it was the introduction of coca cola and a technological change in the flour mills to produce white flour, as the American diet had previously been heavy with red meat and fat without the high heart disease incidences. Now before you jump all over me I am not necessarily advocating an Atkins diet, I certainly disagree with the use of artificial sweeteners and the use of soy flour and the dominance of protein as the main energy fuel. However, the studies show that a diet low in carbohydrates ( lots of green leafy veg low starchy carbs) prolonged for a period of time shows major lowering of blood lipids. What I find in clinic is that people feel better and do better when they reduce their starchy carbohydrates. I cannot ignore what I observe, and patients find they are encouraged by their results to overall stick with a lower carbohydrate diet. Whilst you may be an academic, I am a clinician seeking health solutions for my patients. I present varying theories for them to try and we work out together what makes them better. I find even my A Blood type patients telling me they actually do better when they increase protein levels in their diet and start the day with an egg instead of toast. So it is that I have concluded that relying on a fuel system dependent on the transport capacity of insulin is fraught with danger. The more it is used the less it works and just perhaps the ever increasing incidence of insulin resistance and Type II diabetes in our western populations is evidence to support the use of lipids and proteins as important fuels for the Krebs cycle. Please if my thoughts are flawed then educate me rather than criticize me. The play the ball and not the woman. Best wishes, Emmanuel Segmen [susegmen] Friday, 11 February 2005 6:03 PM Chinese Medicine Re: Statin drugs, fats and insulin Sharon, Your post below indicates to me that you have not gotten a grounding in physiology and nutrition with regard to what is insulin and what is glucose. No nutrient can be taken up without insulin. Diabetic Type I people literally starve without their insulin. Plant fiber is glucose that we can not metabolize. Fruit and vegetables that are not starchy provide nutrients without insulin spikes. Presenting refined starches to the intestine causes glucose loads in the blood that are thoussands of times that of eating whole fruits and non-starchy vegetables. Normal amounts of insulin following a low glycemic sort of diet does not confer insulin resistance. So what sort of diet are you recommending in the absence of non- starchy vegetables, fruits and small amounts of meat or fish? You state below that you believe glucose is only for " emergency " sources of energy. Nothing can be farther from the truth. Most cells in the body require glucose. Only muscle and liver tissue utilizes other nutrients. Muscle can only use fatty acids in the presence of glucose. Hence, when the muscle runs out of glycogen (a chain of glucose), the muscle can no longer metabolize fatty acids. The marathoner " hits the wall " , so to speak, at this point. Yes, you do store glucose in your liver and muscle tissue for approximate one day. What have you been reading that leads you to have the beliefs you state below? Why not just study a standard text in nutrition or even read a nutrition and metabolism chapter in a good medical physiology text? At least you'll have a starting point from which to assess the popular press as well as claims made on websites. Get a used copy of the physiology text being used at a nearby university and read the chapters on nutrition and metabolism. I can't carry on a conversation premised on the things you've stated. No place to go. But I've enjoyed it thus far nevertheless. In gratitude, Emmanuel Segmen Chinese Medicine , wrote: > Hi Emmanuel, > Sorry to have said " eating food that your body can't handle " ... I meant food > that your body CAN handle. > > I don't necessarily agree with you about fasting etc. That of course would > come down to many factors. > > I still don't agree with using sugar as the main energy source be that fruit > and veg or refined grains... it all takes insulin to be carried into the > cell. Of course the process of making simple sugar varies, ie the liver is > the only place that fructose becomes glucose so eating a lot of fruit will > demand such work by the liver. Metabolites of the grains are known to play > havoc with arthritic pain etc. > > As far as I understand glucose as an energy source is for emergency with > adrenal response, where the body is flooded with Glucocorticoids, apart from > say red blood cell production which requires glucose. Long term use of > glucose as the main energy source brings with it long term chronic diseases. > Kids on high sugar/carb diets or adrenally stressed by lack of food intake > have the most revolting behaviour problems and are more prone to adrenal > responses. Repeated adrenal responses have a detrimental affect on the > body's immune system etc. > > Species such as horses have massive capacity to store glucose and hence > 'carb loading' has no advantage in the equine athlete - they are hay burners > for a reason. However, an active human lacks such storage capacity for > glucose and could not possibly run an average day on glucoses stored. Hence > the afternoon tiredness etc with the attending hypo and hyper glacemic > responses. > > Furthermore, some people's bodies will turn the glucose more directly into > fat (probably linked to the hormone Leptin) without having the glucose > carried to the mitochondria for cell energy production. Such people then > become hungry quickly eat more sugar type foods ie carbs and then go through > the process all over again. It maybe these people are 'faulty' or it may > just be they run better on burning fat, in which case a higher fat intake > will be a healthy choice for them (providing of course the type of fat). > This may reflect Blood type or some other characteristics. > > Historically I have assumed that this mechanism of to turning glucose into > fat and having sugar cravings was a way to get humans to eat excessively > during the good times to store for the lean times. This is what I meant by > feast famine, I did not mean to eat a restricted calorific diet, which some > advocate. Perhaps it was these people who survived best with a 'sweet' > tooth. I meant to avoid sugar/carbs for extended periods, have their body > burn fat, and return only periodically to sugar/carbs. Hence faking a fast > famine on carbs. > > Best wishes, > > > > Emmanuel Segmen [susegmen@i...] > Friday, 11 February 2005 10:29 AM > Chinese Medicine > Re: Statin drugs, fats and insulin > > > > Hi Sharon, > > Made it back to this site briefly today. Can't stay long, but your > question is a good one. > > I don't advocate grains, but I do advocate complex carbohydrates. > That's the solution for insulin resistance. Flour from grains and > easily accessible starch is the cause of hyperglycemia, subsequent > insulin spikes and subsequent insulin resistance. If you're an > aerobic athlete, you have no insulin resistance, so go ahead and eat > bread and pasta. But I've actually dropped unprocessed grains from > my diet despite being an aerobic athlete since age 14. Once I got > past 45 even with my long distance running, I do better with cooked > vegetables and fresh fruit. > > The point is to present the gastrointestinal mucosa with whole foods > rather than highly concentrated (in a sense " naked " ) ingredients. > Keep the clothing on the food, don't refine it. Refined starches > increases the enzyme rates 1,000 fold or more, and this results in a > similarly excessive spike in blood glucose. And you're right, this > is not how the human body developed historically. This kind of blood > glucose spike has been seen pretty recently in history. What's worse > is we have been sendentary now for over half a century. And worse > yet we are presented with " naked " starches in our refined fast foods > and snacks. There is a simple solution, literally. It's actually > easier than ever to cook a soup. The produce section at the grocery > store has plenty of vegetables as well as fresh fruit. > > Our body is designed to " see " sodium as gold (as it once was) and to > spare it in numerous ways. Our body " sees " potassium as a poison and > tries to excrete it. A diet of whole foods is low in sodium and high > in potassium. This is how nature presents it. We are also > configured for starvation. Lots of kidney and adrenal mechanism go > off when our body " sees " low sodium, high potassium or low blood > pressure. The net result of renin-angiotensin/aldosterone signaling > is to spare sodium and raise the blood pressure. Our modern diet has > turned this human physiological configuration on its head. Now we've > got hypertension from a stressful life that's low on activity and > high on sodium and starchy calories. > > The simple solution has been espoused for lo these forty past years. > Eat vegetable soup with small amounts of animal protein (or bones) > along with tender green leafy vegetables and fresh fruit in season. > Period. Add to that 60 minutes as day of cardiovascular exercise ... > 90 minutes if you're overweight. To my students I repeat by > saying, " ... per day! 60 to 90 minutes per day. " > > So I'm with you on a few of your most salient points. You can lose > grains or eat them as wheat berries or whole berries of what ever > grain. I'm old enough now to just drop them. In addition, > practicing a day of fasting, meditation and rest on a regular basis > is great. Or just drink soup broth for one day per week. > > I'm not sure what eating food that your body can't handle means. > Eating less is okay. In clinical nutrition, you begin someone on > clear broth post-surgery or post-trauma. And you build up from > there. So in a sense, the kindest thing for your digestive system is > soup, or a solution of metabolized essenial nutrients. > > What I've found as both a practicing clinical nutritionist and as a > theoretical nutritionist is that people underestimate the importance > of naturally occuring fiber, both soluble and insoluble. Solule > fiber forms stools, feeds flora and is an important source of > flatulence ... ;-) Insoluble fiber increases motility and cleans > out the intestinal haustrae. > > Regarding cholesterol as a number, HDLs and LDLs are excellent > diagnostic tools that tells you on average if someone is fit ... > mainly it's a measure of aerobic fitness. In people who have some > aspect of " familial atherosclerosis " (like Alon), then this > diagnostic tool is of critical importance. If you're not in Alon's > category, I'd agree with you. Relax. It's a number that reflects > fitness. So go for a walk. ;-) > > Thanks again for a lovely exchange. I find your writing inspiring. > > Respectfully, > Emmanuel Segmen > > Chinese Medicine , > wrote: > > Emmanuel, > > Perhaps you can explain this to me. > > If one has insulin resistance why would you continue to eat a > predominance > > of carbohydrate? > > > > Why not use a fuel source the body can't handle? One should also > be aware > > that insulin does far more than clear the blood of sugar. For > instance it > > also gathers the magnesium and no magnesium is going to mean high > blood > > pressure. > > > > If a mother has insulin resistance when pregnant she passes this > on, not > > genetically but environmentally to her foetus. No wonder type II > diabetes > > is now in young kids under the age of 10. > > > > Humans didn't cultivate grains until quite late in our history. And > > certainly did not eat them in the volume currently recommended or > with > > present day processing and not with the multitude of chemicals and > sugar > > that is added routinely. We certainly didn't eat the main staples > of wheat, > > rice, and corn that are found today; there were many more varieties > of > > grains and cereals for those tribes that farmed. > > > > Australian aboriginals still living a traditional life have very > few carb's > > in their diet and did not cultivate grains. The did gather some > seeds from > > acacia trees and make a kind of flour. Many traditional tribes > around the > > world have a similar story to tell of diet. > > > > Finally I just can't accept bringing one's health down to a > cholesterol > > number. Life is so much more than a statistical number. > > Best wishes, > > > > > > > > To translate this message, copy and paste it into this web link page, > http://babel.altavista.com/ > > > and adjust > accordingly. > > Messages are the property of the author. Any duplication outside the group > requires prior permission from the author. > > If you are a TCM academic and wish to discuss TCM with other academics, > > > > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted February 11, 2005 Report Share Posted February 11, 2005 Things have changed considerably in the intervening years. We can talk offlist about anything further. I don't want to spam the group. >>>>>Emmanuel i think many are interested in the subject Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted February 12, 2005 Report Share Posted February 12, 2005 wrote: > Things > have changed considerably in the intervening years. We can talk > offlist about anything further. I don't want to spam the group. > > >>>>>>Emmanuel i think many are interested in the subject Hi Dr. Alon! Yes, I have been reading along with considerable interest as well. Regards, Pete Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted February 12, 2005 Report Share Posted February 12, 2005 Not sure what you mean here. When muscles run out of glycogen (after about 2 hours of continuous activity) then free fatty acids (FFAs) are mobilized and the fatty acids are the fuel of choice. FFA are mobilized by a DECREASE in insulin (i.e. a decrease in blood glucose). >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> There is also a difference between type I and type II muscle fibers. Postural muscles, also called Tonic or red muscles, have a significantly larger number of type I (slow) fibers than phasic muscles have. Type I fibers are more vascular (containing more myoglobin) and resistant to fatigue than type II fibers. Their metabolism is oxidative (due to myoglobin). Myoglobin has a six times greater affinity for oxygen than the hemoglobin which carries the oxygen in the blood. Slow fibers utilize sugar (glucose) for fuel and can completely oxidize the glucose to carbon dioxide and water. Twenty times more ATP can be produced by the oxidation of glucose in the slow fibers than by the splitting of glucose in fast (tonic) fibers. Slow fibers can also use fatty acids for their fuel. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted February 12, 2005 Report Share Posted February 12, 2005 fructose becomes glucose >>>>Fructose is also more likely to be a problem for people with high trig Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted February 12, 2005 Report Share Posted February 12, 2005 I did not mean to eat a restricted calorific diet,which some advocate. >>>>>>>>restricted caloric diet is the only dietary intervention that has shown to increase life span Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted February 12, 2005 Report Share Posted February 12, 2005 On Feb 11, 2005, at 3:02 AM, Emmanuel Segmen wrote: > No nutrient can be taken up without insulin. Diabetic Type I people > literally starve without their insulin. Can you explain what you mean by " no nutrient can be taken up without insulin? " Yes it is being discovered that insulin is required for the expression of more transport proteins than ever thought, but there are plenty of examples of nutrients making their way into cells without insulin. Yes, without insulin cells would starve for the lack of glucose, however it is technically incorrect to say that no nutrient can be taken up w/o insulin. Amino acids all have various types of transporters not requiring insulin in order for uptake, there are symporter Na/Ca pumps, active transporter ATPase, the micronutrients are taken up by expression of various transport proteins, Vit C can be taken up w/o insulin (although it is also taken up by GLUT4 which is expressed by insulin). > Plant fiber is glucose that we can not metabolize. Well it is really cellulose, pectin, lignin ec made up of various branched chains of glucose and derivatives some that we can metabolize(soluble) and some that we can't. > Presenting refined starches to the intestine causes glucose > loads in the blood that are thoussands of times that of eating whole > fruits and non-starchy vegetables. Although we all agree that refined carbs off little energetic value I'm not sure you could point to research that proves this. You are saying breads would cause glucose loads 1000x time that of a grape? (BTW I have read where grape juice has a higher insulin spike than whole grapes). > Most > cells in the body require glucose. Only muscle and liver tissue > utilizes other nutrients. As well as.....Once we shift into gluconeogenisis the brain is using mostly " ketone bodies " . And the epithelial cells of the GI use glutamine as a major source of energy. (one of the reasons for high glutamine supplements of chemo patients) The Heart also uses FFAs and " ketone bodies " , so it is more than just muscle and liver. > Muscle can only use fatty acids in the > presence of glucose. Hence, when the muscle runs out of glycogen (a > chain of glucose), the muscle can no longer metabolize fatty acids. > The marathoner " hits the wall " , so to speak, at this point. Not sure what you mean here. When muscles run out of glycogen (after about 2 hours of continuous activity) then free fatty acids (FFAs) are mobilized and the fatty acids are the fuel of choice. FFA are mobilized by a DECREASE in insulin (i.e. a decrease in blood glucose). > Yes, you do store glucose in your liver and muscle tissue for > approximate one > day. You meant to say the liver stores glycogen not glucose. Interesting to see a western nutrition discussion on a TCM list! Best Regards, George Mandler MS(Human Nutrition) & TCM student > > Chinese Medicine , > wrote: >> Hi Emmanuel, >> Sorry to have said " eating food that your body can't handle " ... I > meant food >> that your body CAN handle. >> >> I don't necessarily agree with you about fasting etc. That of > course would >> come down to many factors. >> >> I still don't agree with using sugar as the main energy source be > that fruit >> and veg or refined grains... it all takes insulin to be carried > into the >> cell. Of course the process of making simple sugar varies, ie the > liver is >> the only place that fructose becomes glucose so eating a lot of > fruit will >> demand such work by the liver. Metabolites of the grains are known > to play >> havoc with arthritic pain etc. >> >> As far as I understand glucose as an energy source is for emergency > with >> adrenal response, where the body is flooded with Glucocorticoids, > apart from >> say red blood cell production which requires glucose. Long term > use of >> glucose as the main energy source brings with it long term chronic > diseases. >> Kids on high sugar/carb diets or adrenally stressed by lack of food > intake >> have the most revolting behaviour problems and are more prone to > adrenal >> responses. Repeated adrenal responses have a detrimental affect on > the >> body's immune system etc. >> >> Species such as horses have massive capacity to store glucose and > hence >> 'carb loading' has no advantage in the equine athlete - they are > hay burners >> for a reason. However, an active human lacks such storage capacity > for >> glucose and could not possibly run an average day on glucoses > stored. Hence >> the afternoon tiredness etc with the attending hypo and hyper > glacemic >> responses. >> >> Furthermore, some people's bodies will turn the glucose more > directly into >> fat (probably linked to the hormone Leptin) without having the > glucose >> carried to the mitochondria for cell energy production. Such > people then >> become hungry quickly eat more sugar type foods ie carbs and then > go through >> the process all over again. It maybe these people are 'faulty' or > it may >> just be they run better on burning fat, in which case a higher fat > intake >> will be a healthy choice for them (providing of course the type of > fat). >> This may reflect Blood type or some other characteristics. >> >> Historically I have assumed that this mechanism of to turning > glucose into >> fat and having sugar cravings was a way to get humans to eat > excessively >> during the good times to store for the lean times. This is what I > meant by >> feast famine, I did not mean to eat a restricted calorific diet, > which some >> advocate. Perhaps it was these people who survived best with > a 'sweet' >> tooth. I meant to avoid sugar/carbs for extended periods, have > their body >> burn fat, and return only periodically to sugar/carbs. Hence > faking a fast >> famine on carbs. >> >> Best wishes, >> >> >> >> Emmanuel Segmen [susegmen@i...] >> Friday, 11 February 2005 10:29 AM >> Chinese Medicine >> Re: Statin drugs, fats and insulin >> >> >> >> Hi Sharon, >> >> Made it back to this site briefly today. Can't stay long, but > your >> question is a good one. >> >> I don't advocate grains, but I do advocate complex carbohydrates. >> That's the solution for insulin resistance. Flour from grains and >> easily accessible starch is the cause of hyperglycemia, subsequent >> insulin spikes and subsequent insulin resistance. If you're an >> aerobic athlete, you have no insulin resistance, so go ahead and > eat >> bread and pasta. But I've actually dropped unprocessed grains > from >> my diet despite being an aerobic athlete since age 14. Once I got >> past 45 even with my long distance running, I do better with > cooked >> vegetables and fresh fruit. >> >> The point is to present the gastrointestinal mucosa with whole > foods >> rather than highly concentrated (in a sense " naked " ) ingredients. >> Keep the clothing on the food, don't refine it. Refined starches >> increases the enzyme rates 1,000 fold or more, and this results > in a >> similarly excessive spike in blood glucose. And you're right, > this >> is not how the human body developed historically. This kind of > blood >> glucose spike has been seen pretty recently in history. What's > worse >> is we have been sendentary now for over half a century. And worse >> yet we are presented with " naked " starches in our refined fast > foods >> and snacks. There is a simple solution, literally. It's actually >> easier than ever to cook a soup. The produce section at the > grocery >> store has plenty of vegetables as well as fresh fruit. >> >> Our body is designed to " see " sodium as gold (as it once was) and > to >> spare it in numerous ways. Our body " sees " potassium as a poison > and >> tries to excrete it. A diet of whole foods is low in sodium and > high >> in potassium. This is how nature presents it. We are also >> configured for starvation. Lots of kidney and adrenal mechanism > go >> off when our body " sees " low sodium, high potassium or low blood >> pressure. The net result of renin-angiotensin/aldosterone > signaling >> is to spare sodium and raise the blood pressure. Our modern diet > has >> turned this human physiological configuration on its head. Now > we've >> got hypertension from a stressful life that's low on activity and >> high on sodium and starchy calories. >> >> The simple solution has been espoused for lo these forty past > years. >> Eat vegetable soup with small amounts of animal protein (or bones) >> along with tender green leafy vegetables and fresh fruit in > season. >> Period. Add to that 60 minutes as day of cardiovascular > exercise ... >> 90 minutes if you're overweight. To my students I repeat by >> saying, " ... per day! 60 to 90 minutes per day. " >> >> So I'm with you on a few of your most salient points. You can > lose >> grains or eat them as wheat berries or whole berries of what ever >> grain. I'm old enough now to just drop them. In addition, >> practicing a day of fasting, meditation and rest on a regular > basis >> is great. Or just drink soup broth for one day per week. >> >> I'm not sure what eating food that your body can't handle means. >> Eating less is okay. In clinical nutrition, you begin someone on >> clear broth post-surgery or post-trauma. And you build up from >> there. So in a sense, the kindest thing for your digestive system > is >> soup, or a solution of metabolized essenial nutrients. >> >> What I've found as both a practicing clinical nutritionist and as > a >> theoretical nutritionist is that people underestimate the > importance >> of naturally occuring fiber, both soluble and insoluble. Solule >> fiber forms stools, feeds flora and is an important source of >> flatulence ... ;-) Insoluble fiber increases motility and cleans >> out the intestinal haustrae. >> >> Regarding cholesterol as a number, HDLs and LDLs are excellent >> diagnostic tools that tells you on average if someone is fit ... >> mainly it's a measure of aerobic fitness. In people who have > some >> aspect of " familial atherosclerosis " (like Alon), then this >> diagnostic tool is of critical importance. If you're not in > Alon's >> category, I'd agree with you. Relax. It's a number that reflects >> fitness. So go for a walk. ;-) >> >> Thanks again for a lovely exchange. I find your writing > inspiring. >> >> Respectfully, >> Emmanuel Segmen >> >> Chinese Medicine , >> wrote: >>> Emmanuel, >>> Perhaps you can explain this to me. >>> If one has insulin resistance why would you continue to eat a >> predominance >>> of carbohydrate? >>> >>> Why not use a fuel source the body can't handle? One should > also >> be aware >>> that insulin does far more than clear the blood of sugar. For >> instance it >>> also gathers the magnesium and no magnesium is going to mean > high >> blood >>> pressure. >>> >>> If a mother has insulin resistance when pregnant she passes this >> on, not >>> genetically but environmentally to her foetus. No wonder type > II >> diabetes >>> is now in young kids under the age of 10. >>> >>> Humans didn't cultivate grains until quite late in our > history. And >>> certainly did not eat them in the volume currently recommended > or >> with >>> present day processing and not with the multitude of chemicals > and >> sugar >>> that is added routinely. We certainly didn't eat the main > staples >> of wheat, >>> rice, and corn that are found today; there were many more > varieties >> of >>> grains and cereals for those tribes that farmed. >>> >>> Australian aboriginals still living a traditional life have very >> few carb's >>> in their diet and did not cultivate grains. The did gather some >> seeds from >>> acacia trees and make a kind of flour. Many traditional tribes >> around the >>> world have a similar story to tell of diet. >>> >>> Finally I just can't accept bringing one's health down to a >> cholesterol >>> number. Life is so much more than a statistical number. >>> Best wishes, >>> >> >> >> >> >> >> To translate this message, copy and paste it into this web link > page, >> http://babel.altavista.com/ >> >> >> and > adjust >> accordingly. >> >> Messages are the property of the author. Any duplication outside > the group >> requires prior permission from the author. >> >> If you are a TCM academic and wish to discuss TCM with other > academics, >> >> >> >> Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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