Part 3 of 4 (Part 1, Part 2, Part 4)
By Ron Rosedale, M.D.
Presented at Designs for Health
Institute's BoulderFest August 1999 Seminar
What else is bad about
sugar?
We know it increases insulin, but even by itself,
sugar is bad for you. You can divide aging into basically two
major categories, there is genetic causes of aging, we know that
cells have a limited capacity to divide, normally we never get
there, but the more rapidly you make cells divide, the more rapidly
they age.
One of the effects of insulin is to stimulate cellular proliferation
and division. So we know that it increases the rate of aging of
a cell population just by that, that is another whole discussion.
Let's go to the other half. Our cells accumulate damage with age
we cannot help that.
When I say aging, we really are talking about something called
senescence, or the damage associated with aging, but the common
usage is the word aging. I cannot prevent you from being a day
older tomorrow, that is aging, tomorrow you will be a day older
than today, and that we cannot do anything about. When we talk
about aging we normally think about the damage that is associated
with that day.
We have accumulated more damage during that day, that is called
senescence. What causes that damage? There is often an example
of test tubes in a laboratory. You don't think of test tubes as
aging, yet if you mark test tubes with a little red dot and counted
the number of test tubes there were at the end of the year with
a little red dot left, there would hardly be any, why, because
they have encountered damage. They've broken, so even though there
is not aging they do have immortality rates. Aging is an increase
in the rate of mortality.
In humans, the rate
of mortality doubles every eight years.
That is really how you gauge the rate of aging.
We found in animal studies that the rate of aging can be largely
controlled by insulin. But the damage that accumulates during
that aging is caused by largely by sugar.
The two major causes of accumulated damage are oxygenation, and
glycation. I'm not going to spend my time talking about oxidation.
Most of you know all about that.
What is oxidation?
There are several definitions but we can use a
very common one, whenever oxygen combines with something, it oxidizes.
Oxygen is a very poisonous substance. Throughout most of the history
of life on Earth there was no oxygen. Organisms had to develop
very specific mechanisms of dealing with high levels of oxygen
before there could ever be life with oxygen.
So we evolved very quickly, as plants arose and developed a very
easy means of acquiring energy, they could just lay back and catch
rays, and they dealt with that oxygen with the carbon dioxide
by spitting it out, they didn't want it around. So the oxygen
in the atmosphere increased. All the other organisms then had
to cope with that toxic oxygen. Many perished if they didn't have
ways of dealing with it.
One of the earliest ways of dealing with all that oxygen was for
the cells to huddle together, so that at least the interior cells
wouldn't be exposed to as much. So, multi-celled organisms arose
after oxygen did. Of course, with that came the need for cellular
communication.
So let's talk about
glycation.
Everyone knows that oxygen causes damage, but unfortunately,
the press has not been as kind to publicize glycation. Glycation
is the same as oxidation except substitute the word glucose. When
you glycate something you combine it with glucose. Glucose combines
with anything else really, it's a very sticky molecule.
Just take sugar on your fingers. It's very sticky. It sticks specifically
to proteins. So the glycation of proteins is extremely important.
If it sticks around a while it produces what are called advanced
glycated end products.
That acronym is not an accident; it stands for A.G.E.'s. If you
can turn over, or re-manufacture the protein that's good, and
it increases the rate of protein turnover if you are lucky. Glycation
damages the protein to the extent that white blood cells will
come around and gobble it up and get rid of it, so then you have
to produce more, putting more of a strain on your ability to repair
and maintain your body.
That is the best alternative; the worst alternative is when those
proteins get glycated that can't turn over very rapidly, like
collagen, or like a protein that makes up nerve tissue. These
proteins cannot be gotten rid of, so the protein accumulates,
and the A.G.E.'s accumulate and they continue to damage.
That includes the collagen that makes up the matrix of your arteries.
A.G.E.'s are so bad that we know that there are receptors for
A.G.E.'s, hundreds of receptors for every macrophage. They are
designed to try to get rid of those A.G.E.'s, but what happens
when a macrophage combines with an A.G.E. product?
It sets up an inflammatory reaction. We know that cardiovascular
is an inflammatory process, any type of inflammation. You eat
a diet that promotes elevated glucose, and you produce increased
glycated proteins and A.G.E.'s, you are increasing your rate of
inflammation of any kind. You get down to the roots, including
arthritis, headaches.
When you start putting people on a diet to remedy all of this,
my practice is largely diabetes, so my patients are more concerned
with their blood sugar and their heart, things like that, but
it is so common to have them come back and tell me they used to
have horrible headaches and now don't have them anymore, or that
they had a horrible pain in their shoulder, or terrible Achilles
tendonitis that they don't have any more.
The glycated proteins
are making the person very pro-inflammatory.
So we age and at least partially we accumulate
damage by oxidation, and one of the most important types of tissues
that oxygenate is the fatty component, the lipid, especially the
poly-unsaturated fatty acids, they turn rancid. And they glycate,
and the term for glycation in the food industry is carmelization.
They use it all the time, that is how you make caramel. So the
way we age is that we turn rancid and we carmelize. It's very
true. And that is what gets most of us. If that doesn't get us,
then the genetic causes of aging will, because every cell in your
body has genetic programs to commit suicide. There are various
theories for this, one is that if they didn't, virtually every
cell in your body would eventually turn cancerous.
Whether those so-called applopatic genes developed as a means
to prevent cancer or not is open to speculation but it is a good
theory. We know that all cancer cells have turned off the mechanisms
for applotosis, which is the medical term for chemical suicide.
So we know that it plays a role.
Let's get to diet.
Diet really becomes pretty simple. Carbohydrates
we started talking about. You've got fiber and non-fiber and that's
real clear-cut. Fiber is good, non-fiber is bad. Fibrous carbs,
like vegetables and broccoli, those are great. What is a potato?
A potato is a big lump of sugar. That's all it is. You chew a
potato, what are you swallowing? Glucose. You may not remember,
but you learned that in eighth grade, but the medical profession
still hasn't learned that.
What is the major salivary
enzyme?
Amylase. What is amylase used for? To break down
amylose which is just a tree of glucose molecules. What is a slice
of bread? A slice of sugar. Does it have anything else good about
it? Virtually no. Somebody emailed me who had decided to do a
little research. And there are fifty-some essential nutrients
to the human body.
You know you need to breathe oxygen. It gives us life and it kills
us. Same with glucose. Certain tissues require some glucose. We
wouldn't be here if there were no glucose, it gives us life and
it kills us. We know that we have essential amino acids and we
have essential fatty acids. They are essential for life, we better
take them in as building blocks or we die. So what he did is he
took all the essential nutrients that are known to man and plugged
it in to this computer data bank and he asked the computer what
are the top ten foods that contain each nutrient that is required
by the human body. Each of the fifty-three or fifty-four, depending
on who you talk to, essential nutrients that there are were plugged
in, and did you know that grains did not come up in the top ten
on any one.
What is the
minimum daily requirement for carbohydrates?
ZERO.
What is the food pyramid
based on? A totally irrelevant nutrient.
Let's go beyond Carbohydrates.
Let's back up even further? Why do we eat? One
reason is energy. That's half of the reason. It is very simple,
there are two reasons why we eat, one is to gather energy. We
need to obtain energy. The other essential reason (Not just for
fun! Fun is a good one, but you won't have much fun if you eat
too much) is to replace tissue, to gather up building blocks for
maintenance and repair.
Those are the two essential reasons that we need
to eat. We need the building blocks and we need fuel, not the
least of which is to have energy to obtain those building blocks
and then to have energy to fuel those chemical reactions to use
those building blocks.
So what are the building blocks that are needed, proteins and
fatty acids. Not much in the way if carbohydrates. You can get
all the carbohydrates you need from proteins and fats. So the
building blocks are covered by proteins and fats.
What about fuel?
That's the other reason we eat. There are two kinds
of fuel that your body can use with minor exceptions, sugar and
fat. We mentioned earlier that the body is going to store excess
energy as fat. Why does the body store it as fat? Because that
is the body's desired fuel. That is the fuel the body wants to
burn and that will sustain you and allow you to live. The body
can store only a little bit of sugar.
In an active day you would die if you had to rely one-hundred
percent on sugar.
Why doesn't your body store more sugar if it is so needed? Sugar
was never meant to be your primary energy source.
Sugar is meant to be
your body's turbo charger.
Everybody right here, right now should be burning
mostly, almost all fat with minor exceptions. Your brain will
burn sugar, it doesn't have to, it can do very well, even better
by burning by-products of fat metabolism called ketones. That
is what it has to burn when you fast for any length of time. They
have shown that if your brain was really good at burning ketones
from fat that you can get enough sugar that your brain needs actually
from fat; just eating one-hundred percent fat.
You can make a little bit of sugar out of the glycerol molecule
of fat. Take two glycerol molecules and you have a molecule of
glucose. Two triglycerides will give you a molecule of glucose.
The brain can actually exist without a whole lot of sugar, contrary
to popular belief. Glucose was meant to be fuel used if you had
to, in an emergency situation, expend and extreme amount of energy,
such as running from a saber tooth tiger.
It is a turbo charger, a very hot burning fuel, if you need fuel
over and above what fat can provide you will dig into your glycogen
and burn sugar. But your primary energy source as we are here
right now should be almost all fat.
But what happens if
you eat sugar.
Your body's main way of getting rid of it, because
it is toxic, is to burn it. That which your body can't burn your
body will get rid of by storing it as glycogen and when that gets
filled up your body stores it as fat. If you eat sugar your body
will burn it and you stop burning fat.
We talked about a lot of the effects of high insulin. We talked
about insulin causing the formation of saturated fat from sugar.
Another major effect of insulin on fat is it prevents you from
burning it. What happens when you are insulin resistant and you
have a bunch of insulin floating around all the time, you wake
up in the morning with an insulin of 90.
How much fat are you going to be burning? Virtually none. What
are you going to burn if not fat? Sugar coming from your muscle.
So you have all this fat that you've accumulated over the years
that your body is very adept at adding to. Every time you have
any excess energy you are going to store it as fat, but if you
don't eat, where you would otherwise be able to burn it, you cannot
and you will still burn sugar because that is all your body is
capable of burning anymore.
Where is it going to
get the sugar?
Well you don't store much of it in the form of
sugar so it will take it from your muscle. That's your body's
major depot of sugar. You just eat up your muscle tissue. Any
time you have excess you store it as fat and any time you are
deficient you burn up your muscle.
Getting back to the macronutrients, fuel, fat is your best fuel
by far and the fuel that your body wants to use. So there are
two reasons to eat, you need to gather the building blocks for
maintenance and repair, that's protein and fat, no carbohydrate
needed, and you eat for fuel, without question, fat is your most
efficient fuel and the fuel that your body desires the most.
So where do carbohydrates
come in?
They don't. There is no essential need for carbohydrates.
SO why are we all eating carbohydrates? To keep the rate of aging
up, we don't want to pay social security to everyone.
I didn't say you can't have any carbs, I said fiber is good. Vegetables
are great, I want you to eat vegetables. The practical aspect
of it is that you are going to get carbs, but there is no essential
need. The traditional Eskimo diet for most of the year subsists
on almost no vegetables at all, but they get their vitamins from
organ meats and things like eyeball which are a delicacy, or were.
So, you don't really need it, but sure, vegetables are good for
you and you should eat them. They are part of the diet that I
would recommend, and that is where you'll get your vitamin C.
I recommend Vitamin C supplements, I don't have anything against
taking supplements, I use a lot of them.
Fruit is a mixed blessing. You can divide food on a continuum.
There are some foods that I really can't say anything good about
since there is no reason really to recommend them. And the other
end of the spectrum are foods that are totally essential, like
omega 3 fatty acids for instance which most people are very deficient
in, and even those have a detriment because they are highly oxidizable,
so you had better have the antioxidant capacity. So if you are
going to supplement with cod liver oil you should supplement with
Vitamin E too or it will actually do you more harm than good.
But most foods fall in the middle somewhere. Things like strawberries,
you are going to get something bad with strawberries, you are
going to get a lot of sugar with strawberries, but you are also
going to get a food that is also the second or third highest in
antioxidant potential of any food known, the first being garlic
the second either being strawberries or blueberries. So, there
is something good to be had from it. So I will let some patients
put some strawberries in let's say a protein smoothie in the morning.
But if they are a hard core diabetic, strawberries are out.
It doesn't take much, if you have a type I diabetic who is not
producing any insulin they can tell you what foods do to their
blood sugar. It doesn't take much. What is very surprising to
these people once they really measure is what little carbohydrate
it takes to cause your blood sugar to skyrocket.
One saltine cracker will take the blood sugar to go over 100 and
in many people it will cause the blood sugar to go to 150 for
a variety of reasons, not just the sugar in it.
When you are eating a high carbohydrate diet, when you are born,
your mother, everbody is telling you to eat a bowl of Cheerios
for breakfast. You eat that bowl of cheerios and that turns to
sugar, and your sugar goes up very rapidly and that causes a big
rush of insulin and your body all of a sudden senses a huge amount
of sugar being delivered to it at once, of which it was never
used to, in an evolutionary sense.
We only have one hormone that lowers sugar, and that's insulin.
Its primary use was never to lower sugar. We've got a bunch of
hormones that raise sugar, cortisone being one and growth hormone
another, and epinephrine, and glucagon.
Our primary evolutionary problem was to raise blood sugar to give
your brain enough and your nerves enough and primarily red blood
cells, which require glucose. So from an evolutionary sense if
something is important we have redundant mechanisms. The fact
that we only have one hormone that lowers sugar tells us that
it was never something important in the past.
So you get this rush of sugar and your body panics, your pancreas
panics and it stores, when it is healthy, insulin in these granules,
ready to be released. It lets these granules out and it pours
out a bunch of insulin to deal with this onslaught of sugar and
what does that do?
Well the pancreas generally overcompensates, and it causes your
sugar to go down, and just as I mentioned, you have got a bunch
of hormones then to raise your blood sugar, they are then released,
including cortisone. The biggest stress on your body is eating
a big glucose load.
Then Epinephrine is released too, so it makes your nervous and
it also stimulates your brain to crave carbohydrates, to seek
out some sugar, my sugar is low. So you are craving carbohydrates,
so you eat another bowl of cheerios, or a big piece of fruit,
you eat something else so that after your sugar goes low, and
with the hormone release, and with the sugar cravings and carbohydrate
craving your sugars go way up again which causes your pancreas
to release more insulin and then it goes way down.
Now you are in to this sinusoidal wave of blood sugar, which causes
insulin resistance. Your body can't stand that for very long.
So you are constantly putting out cortisone.
We can talk about insulin
resistance.
We hear a lot about insulin resistance, but
stop and think a little bit, do you think our cells only become
resistant to insulin? The more hormones your cells are exposed
to, the more resistant they will become to almost any hormone.
Certain cells more than others, so there is a discrepancy. The
problem with hormone resistance is that there is a dichotomy of
resistance, that all the cells don't become resistant at the same
time.
And different hormones affect different cells, and the rate of
hormone is different among different cells and this causes lots
of problems with the feedback mechanisms. We know that one of
the major areas of the body that becomes resistant to many feedback
loops is the hypothalamus. The various interrelationships there
I really don't have time to go in to here.
But hypothalamic resistance to feedback signals plays a very important
role in aging and insulin resistance because the hypothalamus
has receptors for insulin too. I mentioned that insulin stimulates
sympathetic nervous system, it does so through the hypothalamus,
which is the center of it all.
Part 4
