And carbohydrates? There is no such thing as a necessary carbohydrate. Read that again. Write the Drs. Eades, "the actual amount of carbohydrates required by humans for health is zero."33
Every cell in your body can make all the sugar it needs. That includes the cells in your hungry brain. The detractors of low-carb diets have created and endlessly repeated the myth that our brains need glucose and hence we need to eat carbohydrates. Yes, our brains do need glucose—which is precisely why our bodies can make glucose. What the brain actually needs is a very steady supply of glucose: too much or too little will create a biological emergency that can result in coma and death, as any diabetic will tell you. And a constant cycle of too much/too little is exactly what a carbohydrate-based diet will provide, leaving a wreckage of deteriorating organs and arteries behind. A partial list of diseases caused by high insulin levels includes "heart disease, elevated cholesterol, elevated triglycerides, high blood pres¬sure, blood clotting problems, colon cancer (and a number of other cancers), type II diabetes, gout, sleep apnea, obesity, iron-overload disease, gastroesophageal reflux (severe heartburn), peptic ulcer dis¬ease, [and] polycystic ovary disease."34
These are serious diseases and they are endemic to civilized cultures. We accept them as normal because they are ubiquitous. We eat the foods our culture provides; we get sick. But then everyone is sick—who doesn't know someone with diabetes, cancer, heart disease, arthritis?—so no one questions it. And it's a lot to question, from the USDA food pyramid, to the righteous aura with which the Left has infused plant-based foods, to civilization itself. These are powerful forces to which our own native intelligence—both personal and cultural—has long been subordinated.
What we are left with are cravings, both vague and unbearable, that we have taught ourselves to fight. "When I eat, I feel full," a friend of mine said. "But when I eat at your house, I feel nourished." Believe me, it's not my skill as a chef she's acknowledging. It's the quality of the ingredients: real food. Real protein and real fats from animals who in turn ate their real food.
{...}
These are daunting obstacles, and if you can't find your way clear to the true hunger beneath, maybe the damage of a plant-based diet can lead you there. Maybe you don't find the molecular mimicry of autoimmune disorders strong enough evidence. Then listen to this instead: "The diseases that insulin affects directly ... are the cause of the vast majority of death and disability in the US today. They are the grim reapers of Western civilization."36 Heart disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes are all caused by the insulin surges that grain and sugar demand.
What's the difference between complex carbohydrates and sugar? Despite the intense propaganda to declare the former "good" and the latter "bad," not much. "Many people are of the opinion that there are good and bad carbohydrates, when in actuality there are barely tolerable and awful sugars," write the Drs. Eades.37 Whether "complex" or "simple," all carbohydrates are sugars. The only difference is whether they are individual sugar molecules or a string of sugar molecules. Glucose is the simplest sugar, made of a single molecule. Sucrose, regular table sugar, is made of two molecules and is, hence, a disaccharide. There are three-molecule trisaccharides. Sugars with more molecules are called polysaccharides. These include grains, beans, and potatoes.
Why don't these differences matter? Because our digestive system can't digest the long chains. They're too big to be absorbed through the intestinal wall. So our bodies break them down into simple sugars. And every last molecule eventually hits the bloodstream:
So whether it began life as a fat-free bagel, a quarter cup of sugar from the sugar bowl, a canned soft drink, a bowl of fettuccine, a baked potato, or a handful of jelly beans, by the time your intestinal tract gets finished snipping the links of those starch and sugar chains, it's all been reduced to ... sugar. Specifically, to glucose. And in the end there's very little metabolic difference between your eating a medium baked potato or drinking a 12-ounce can of soda pop. Each contains about fifty grams of easily digestible and rapidly available glucose. It may surprise you to know that the potato might even be slightly worse in terms of the rise in blood sugar that follows it.38
According to the USDA, we should be eating a diet that is 60 percent carbohydrate. Your body will turn that carbohydrate into almost two cups of glucose, and each and every molecule has to be reckoned with.
That amount of sugar in the bloodstream would lead to coma and death if humans didn't have a way to process sugar, and fast. So the body comes equipped with a mechanism to clear sugar from the blood, but it's a mechanism that agriculturalists wear out. Elevated sugar levels stimulate the pancreas to produce insulin. Insulin is a hormone responsible for nutrient storage. Its primary purpose is to get excess sugar, amino acids, and fats out of the blood and into the cells.
Sugar is the most dangerous of those three, as too much sugar can cause serious consequences very quickly. So insulin's most important job is to keep blood sugar levels out of the red zone. It does this by binding with insulin receptors, which are proteins on a cell's surface that remove sugar from the blood. Insulin is the switch that turns on the insulin receptors, which then do the work of moving glucose into the cell.
Patients with juvenile diabetes have pancreases that produce very little insulin. Their insulin receptors are in working order, but without the stimulating presence of insulin, their receptors are never triggered to act. That's why these patients take insulin.
Type II diabetes has a different etiology. Eating any carbohydrate or sugar results in a glucose surge in the bloodstream. The pancreas responds with insulin, insulin triggers the insulin receptors, and the insulin receptors pump sugar into the cells for immediate use or for storage. So far, so good.
The problem comes with overuse. When blood sugar levels are constantly spiking from a diet high in carbohydrates, the amount of insulin required to deal with that will, over time, damage the insulin receptors, blunting their ability to work. Yet the high levels of sugar still need to be lowered, and lowered quickly. So the pancreas pumps out even more insulin, which temporarily forces the insulin receptors into action but ultimately creates still more damage. Now there is so much insulin in the blood that by the time it's all absorbed by the insulin receptors, blood sugar levels will be too low. This cycle, of high blood sugar — too much insulin — low blood sugar, is called hypo- glycemia, and it ends when the sufferer, biologically desperate to raise her blood sugar levels, puts another dose of sugar into her mouth with a sweaty, shaking hand. That will help, for an hour or two—until her blood sugar crashes again and the whole process starts over.
Where it really ends is in type II diabetes. The resistant insulin receptors demand too much insulin, more than the pancreas could ever make. The chronic excess sugar destroys the nerves, the arteries, the retinas, the heart. Despite every advance in medical science, a diabetic's life can be shortened by one third.39 Such are the wages of civilization's dietary sins.
Because insulin also controls a number of other basic life functions, high levels of insulin will cause damage throughout the body. Insulin triggers cholesterol synthesis, activating the enzymes that spur cholesterol production. About 80 percent of your cholesterol is made in your body: only 20 percent is dietary, which is one reason why low-fat diets have proven basically useless. Though every one of your cells both makes and needs cholesterol, most of it is produced in the liver. Elevated insulin means elevated cholesterol. The Drs. Eades explain why.
Excess food energy increases blood sugar, which increases insulin, which triggers the storage cycle leading to fat accumulation. To store fat and build muscle, the body must make new cells, and insulin acts as a growth hormone for this process. Cholesterol plays a vital role in this building and stor¬ing process; cholesterol provides the structural framework for
all cells.40
And high blood pressure, heart disease, and arteriosclerosis? Too much insulin triggers the growth of smooth muscle cells that line the arteries, thickening the walls and reducing elasticity. Blood volume of the arteries shrinks, which means the heart has to pump harder, which is another way of saying "high blood pressure." Insulin also triggers the kidneys to retain fluid, which again increases blood pressure. Arteries with less elasticity are more insulin also encourages fibrous connective tissue to grow inside the arteries, providing a scaffold for the first layer of plaque.
Insulin increases oxidation of LDL particles. These hard-working substances have been declared guilty for no good reason and dubbed "bad cholesterol." Like the rest of us, they're only bad when they're damaged. And what damages them? Too much blood sugar and insulin. Sugars are able to attach to proteins all over the body and start a reaction that creates permanent damage to the cells. This process is called glycation and fructation, for glucose and fructose, respectively. It's similar to how "dairy protein and fat with sugar and heat ... make caramel."41 The Drs. Eades explain:
Year in and year out, from the time we're born, this damage wrought by the carmelization process accumulates in our bodies; over a lifetime it wreaks the most havoc in long-lived proteins, including elastin, the protein that gives youthful elasticity to the skin; crystallin, the special protein that forms the lens of the eye; DNA, the genetic blueprint present in all cells; and collagen, the structural protein that accounts for over 30 percent of the body's protein mass, occurring in tis¬sues all over the body, including the hair, skin, and nails, the walls of all arteries and veins, and the framework of bones and organs. Damage to these critical protein structures results not only in such cosmetic maladies as wrinkles and age spots, but in serious health problems ranging from cataracts to failure of major organs, such as the kidneys and the heart.42
That's just from ingesting sugar. The excess insulin required by that ingestion makes it even worse: insulin raises the rate of oxidation of the LDL particles. So on a carbohydrate-based diet, there's lots of sugar to do damage, and that sugar requires insulin that adds even more damage. Once impaired, the LDL heads for the arterial walls. There, it sets off an immune reaction. The body's defenders, the macrophages, will attack and dismember the LDL, creating inflammation and vanquished bits of deranged cholesterol. Those bits are now bio- available and will be used by the body in the formation of plaque.
Insulin triggers the production of fibrinogen, which is the sub¬stance used in the first stage of clot formation. Insulin also stimulates the kidneys to dump both magnesium and potassium, which can lead to heart arrhythmias and life-threatening fibrillation. Is there any stage of coronary heart disease missing from this indictment?
The counterbalancing hormone to insulin is glucagon. When your blood sugar levels are in free fall and headed for the crash, glucagon's job is to get those levels back up. It does this by stimulating the body to burn its reserves of energy, and it has some help: both adrenaline and cortisol are part of the process. Remember that a blood sugar level out of a narrow range—either too low or too high—is a life- threatening emergency, and it requires emergency measures. Adrenaline prepares you for fight or flight. It forces energy out of storage and cranks up the metabolism in your muscles, getting you ready for action. One of the ways it frees up more energy for your muscles is by shutting down your digestive systems: the presence of adrenaline suppresses the stomach's production of hydrochloric acid.
That's fine for the occasional sabertooth tiger attack, but eating a high-carbohydrate diet is a tiger attack three times a day, every day.
). It's one of the substances implicated in every item I've ever read about cellulite. You might be surprised at how sensitive you may become to it. I even have to be careful not to indulge in organic dark chocolate to late in the day because it keeps me awake.
, and I've tried several times to quit without success. Why does it have to taste so good! I've seriously reduced the amount I drink, though, and hope to give it up for good this time. Especially now that I know how evil this stuff is.
Will try to get the books as soon as I can.
