More on repairing the system

While repairing the system (or for not breaking it), out of all carbs, it is especially important to limit everything that contains fructose, that is, sugar and everything, in what it is added (sweet drinks, juices, buns, patties, cookies, biscuits, mayonnaise, ketchup, you name it), or anything abundant with it naturally (honey, fruit). A half of the sugar is fructose. American dietologists believe that the upper limit of daily consumption of sugar in all possible forms is 12 teaspoons (about 60 grams, of which 30 grams is fructose). In fact, this is too much, and the maximum should be 5 or 6 teaspoons (25 to 30 grams). Fructose does not increase the blood glucose level, but it is metabolized only by the liver and is converted only in fats. And, when there is too much fructose, the liver deposits these fats made from fructose right into itself.

Fructose, especially in its pure form or in the form of sugar, gets into our blood through a special vein, which delivers it right into the liver. Conversion of fructose is one of the priorities of the liver. But, if there is a lot of fructose, it has enough time to get to all cells of the body and cause harm. It impedes ability of mitochondria to produce energy and charge ATP molecules. While doing this, it damages mitochondria, not severely, but still. With time, this damage accumulates, and mitochondria become unable to charge ATP molecules in sufficient quantities.  Some studies show that fructose intervenes into production of our own proteins by changing the process of "translation", that is, a method of reading information on the structure of our proteins encoded in our genome.

Also, in the multistage process, some harmful substances are created as byproducts, including uric acid. An excess of this acid causes problems with joints, including arthritis and gout. High level of uric acid is also thought to be related with purines (which are present in red meat and seafood), with caffeine (in coffee) and theobromine (in cocoa), with excess consumption of alcohol and taking medications containing diuretics. But, excess of fructose seems to be a stronger cause of formation of uric acid than purines and is comparable only with alcohol. 

Because fructose does not increase blood glucose level, it is produced in a pure form for diabetics. But fructose is very sweet, twice as sweet as glucose. The organism senses this sweetness and expects a portion of glucose, therefore, it increases the level of insulin in advance. Then this happens: insulin is high, burning of fats is prohibited, but there is no excess of glucose in blood. Instead, the liver has a job to collect fructose and convert it into fats (spending of which is not permitted because of high insulin) and to store these fats in itself. This does not improve the condition of people with diabetes at all. 

Can limitation of consumption  of fruit be right? Fruits are natural products, are they not? Not exactly so. Have you tried wild apples? They are very sour. Yes, they have glucose and fructose, but in a small quantity. And this is a natural product. It is the same with wild berries – they are more sour and less sweet than cultivated ones. Most kinds of fruit that we eat are a result of artificial selection. By what criteria were the fruit-bearing plants selected? By their taste. The sweeter and less sour, the tastier. 

There is no need to completely abandon fruits. They contain lots of useful things. And also, they contain fibers, which slows down absorption of sugar, especially, fructose. As a result, a part of it gets as far as the lower segments of the intestines. where they become food for bacteria that are useful for us. So, the sugar that, owing to the fibers in fruits, gets down there, is lost for us. In fruit juice, there are no fibers, almost or at all, so we get all the sugar, natural and added. Even juice without added sugar gives us more fructose than whole fruits.

Not only bacteria that ae useful for us like fructose, but also those that are harmful. Among them, those that live on our teeth. When food contains a lot of fructose not bound by fibers, these harmful bacteria feel better, faster reproduce and faster destroy our teeth.

When consuming fruit, we should remember that, as a source of energy, it contains mostly carbohydrates. So,, eating 200 grams of potatoes and 100 grams of fruit, or 100 grams of potatoes and 200 grams of fruit gives us about the same amount of carbs. But 300+300 grams of both is certainly too much carbs. And what is certainly should be avoided or substantially limited, is consumption of fructose not supplemented with the fibers of fruit.

Once again. Nobody advises you anything, nobody calls you for action or prohibits anything to you. Check the information, collect additional inrormation and make your own conclusions.

We crave for anything sweet. This is built into us. Sweet food is rare in the nature. Besides, it was not available all around the year. At the same time, this food can be quickly converted into energy, which was in a short supply in old times. Evolution had important reasons to build this desire for the sweet taste into us.

Even in the 1960, candies and sweet drinks were available to the majority of people (including children) not all the time, but mainly on holidays, or some special events, or as a treat at the weekend. But now, sweet food surrounds us and forces itself upon us. And we cannot withstand this pressure and surrender to its mercy. 

To stimulate our consumption of sweet food, evolution developed a special mechanism. When we eat anything sweet, our organism produces dopamine – the hormone of pleasure. And what happens when we feel pleasure? Yes, we want more. And when we get dopamine regularly, our sensitivity to it reduces, and eventually we need larger doses of dopamine to achieve the same pleasure. How can this be achieved? By eating more sweet food and doing it more frequently. If we do not get the next dose of sweets in time, we crave for them and fall into depression. 

Very similar to addiction to illegal drugs, isn't it? And we become victims of this addiction in our childhood and make our children addicted too.

A recommendation to the food producers: add more sugar or fructose to your product, and these "sugar junkies" will be buying more of it. Well, they do not need this advice, they have known and have been doing this for decades. Of course, they are doing this because they care about us, are they not?

Things with fats are not as simple as they may seem. For many years, we have been told that saturated fats are harmful, and unsaturated fats are good. But earlier there was a time when we were told that all fats are bad. Gradually, evidences began to pile up that saturated fats are not harmful, or, at least, not more harmful than carbohydrates, especially sugar. But even now not everybody knows that eating saturated fats is "not prohibited" anymore.

There was also a division of fats by their animal or plant origin. Presumably, fats of the animal origin are bad, because they are saturated, and fats from plants are good, because they are unsaturated. But this is not true. About 60% of animal fats are saturated, and about 40% are unsaturated. Fish oil contains 20% to 30% of saturated fats, depending on the fish, while the remaining part is unsaturated fats. Plant fats are not all unsaturated. Sunflower oil contains 9% of saturated fats, and olive oil, 14% (a little less than in the fish oil). Coconut oil is 80-90% of saturated fats – a larger fraction than in animal fats. What we were told about animal and plant fats was not true.

The best source of energy are saturated fats, or, more specifically, their fatty acids and the ketone bodies that our liver can produce, when expenditure of fats is not blocked by a high insulin level. 

Saturated fats contain "horrible" cholesterol, they say. But not everything is so straightforward with its "horribleness". Besides, we produce our own cholesterol, between it is vitally important for us. Even when we obtain the maximum of it that we can get with food, we still produce up to 80% of all cholesterol that we need. And if we do not get none of it with food, we produce 100%. But this is a separate story.

As for unsaturated fats (vegetable oil, fish oil), there are some reservations, because, among the unsaturated fats, there are omega-6 and omega-3, and really harmful trans-fats may appear in certain circumstances. It is reasonable to learn more about them. For instance, sunflower oil, certainly, should not be the only or the main source of fats. 

Margarine should be better avoided, even though this is a mix of saturated and unsaturated fats in different proportions (depending on the kind and intended purpose of the margarine). But saturated fats in margarine are formed artificially out of unsaturated fats in a technological process. Of course, such artificial saturated fats are different from natural saturated fats, and a part of unsaturated fats becomes trans-fats. Therefore, if natural saturated fats are financially affordable, it is better to avoid margarine. If financial capabilities are very limited, it is probably still better to replace a part of carbs with margarine than to consume pure carbs, but the margarine should be "hard", with a large fraction of saturated fats, not the "soft" one that can be used as a spread, and not "low-fat" margarine.

Is it possible to gain body mass (to get fat) by consuming a lot of fats? Yes. There are two ways. The first (simple and pleasant): to consume a lot of fats and a lot of carbs, especially, sweet ones, and to do it often, with intervals that do not exceed 8 to 10 hours. The second way works even without large amount of carbs, but it is very unpleasant: forced feeding with a lot of fats. It is rather difficult to eat a lot of fats and only small amounts of carbs, especially if the longest interval between meals is 12 hours or more. Try to eat a 200 g pack of butter in a day, with meat or fish, but without bread, cereals, potatoes etc. But a one-kilo sweet cake with the same pack of butter in it, especially with sweet tea or a sweet fizzy drink will disappear unnoticed in a few hours, if you do not stop yourself in time.

The word "died" can mean "things that we usually eat", or "things that we eat to achieve a certain goal". Here we will speak about the second meaning of this word.

Of course, we all have heard or read about innumerable diets for losing weight. Many have tried and found out that they do not work. Not entirely, though; initially it looks like they work, but later they don't. There are also diets from celebrities, who invented these diets themselves, which, allegedly, helped them. 

There is a fashion for diets. They get into fashion, and many people try them, and boast to their friends – I am on this diet, as these celebrities, therefore, I am closer to them than you, dull and uneducated people who are not on this fashionable diet. And then it falls out of fashion. But a new fashion appears, because it never happens that there is no fashion at least for something. 

Diets are often similar to religions or cults. They have "supreme priests" (who have had a "revelation", or who have achieved "enlightenment") and propagators; around them, groups of people form, similar to churches or prayer houses. People of the same faith (same diet) confess each other in their "sins" (deviations from prescriptions of the diet) and hope for absolution. They even suffer morally because they "have sinned". For some, to be a part of the community worshiping this kind of religion is more important than the declared purpose of the diet itself. 

There are also diets not for losing weight. There are medical diets prescribed as a part of treatment of certain diseased. They are appointed by doctors for the period of disease. There are diets for increase of the body mass (by growing muscles) – they are used by athletes or body-builders. There are diets based on certain philosophical or moral principles.

Vegetarian and vegan diets. We will not delve into their philosophical and moral foundations, though there are certain issues there, like privileging some forms of life over others. We will only note that the fraction of proteins in plant food is rather low. About 3% to 6% in most cereals and 8% to 12% in most legumes. If we need 60 grams of proteins per day, we need to eat about 600 grams of beans in "dry" weight" (being boiled, it will be around 1.5 kg). And about 500 grams of carbs, or about 2000 kcal. And some calories will be added as a result of conversion of some amino acids into glucose, and there will be a small amount of fats. If we add 200 grams of vegetable oil, it will also be 4000 kcal (not everyone can spend that much energy in a day), and still the ratio of fats to carbs will not be sufficient for repairing the system, and there will be only the required minimum of proteins.

But it is not possible to eat only beans, because its proteins do not contain the required proportion of amino acids. Different cereals, fruits and vegetables need to be added, where the same amino acids are in different proportions, so that we can get the total proportion of different amino acids required for our organism.  But these cereals, vegetables and fruits contain still less proteins than legumes. So, we have to consume even more carbs just to get enough proteins. And there will be practically no room for additional fats, but if we still add them, most of them will be stored because of insulin, the level of which will be high because  of too much glucose. So, repairing the broken system on these diets is hardly possible. Or, we will have to limit ourselves in the amount of consumed food, but this requires a lot of willpower, because we will starve most of the time.

One more problem with vegan diets is omega-3 fatty acids. There are three kinds of such acids: ALA, EPA and DHA. And we need all three, though, for different purposes. In the "dry-land" plant food, and even not in all of it, there is only ALA (in flax seeds, pumpkin seeds, nuts, sesame seeds and some others). EPA is present in algae (also a kind of plant food suitable for vegans), and fish oil contains EPA and DHA. Our organism can produce EPA and DHA from ALA, but not very effectively and not in sufficient quantities. And there are people who cannot convert ALA into EPA and DHA at all. 

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Of course, there are diets for repairing the system of automatic regulation of consumption, accumulation and expenditure of energy. Carnivore diet, keto diet (aka ketogenic diet), low-carb diet, paleo diet and Mediterranean diet. 

A few words about these diets for repairing the system. They all, in one way or another, recommend the same – smaller amounts of carbs (and larger amounts of fats, especially saturated ones, to replace the lack of energy from carbs), while having a sufficient amount of proteins. In addition, it is recommended that there should be one interval a day between meals that lasts minimum 12 hour, or better 16 to 18 hours.

The carnivore diet is based almost exclusively on food of animal origin – meat, fish, eggs, some dairy products. Carbs in this diet are present in very small amounts, mainly from the remnants of glycogen in meat and lactose in dairy products, in total, around 2% of all food. 

The purpose of the keto diet, as it follows from its name, is achievement of a state, in which ketone bodies become the main source of energy. In it, food of animal origin also dominates, but also some fats of the plant origin are present. Also. some amount of greens and vegetables, nuts and seeds are added as the source of polyphenols, vitamins, minerals and fiber. Carbs in this diet make about 5% to 10%.

The low-carb diet limits but does not exclude consumption of carbs. Since carbohydrates are present almost exclusively in food of plant origin, this food is limited, but not excluded completely. Anywhere from 15% to 20% of carbs.

The paleo diet includes versatile food, including animal products, vegetables and fruit, whole grains and avoidance of deep processing of food. That is, everything that was available as food to primordial humans before formation of the first civilizations. In the Paleolithic, people used primitive tools, mostly made from roughly processed stones and wooden sticks. They already used thermal processing of meat and fish, so, people on this diet do not have to eat raw meat. 

The Mediterranean diet practically copies the way people eat in countries around the Mediterranean Sea. It includes a lot of mead and seafood (fish, shrimps, squids, algae, etc.), but also vegetables, fruit, fats of plant origin, in particular, olive oil, and dairy products, including cheeses from goat and sheep milk, and almost nothing with added sugar. That is, for people of this region, this is not a diet, it is a life style. This diet is not likely to help to overcome a strong insulin resistance, but, when the system is not broken, this diet will preserve its operability.

Should you be on one of these diets for repairing the system? This is up to you. The most important is to understand the main principles: 1) more fats (especially saturated ones), and less carbs (especially sugar), 2) one large interval a day between meals (minimum 12 hours, but better 16 to 18 hours or more, if you like it), 3) motion is life. And it is better to apply these principles not as a "diet", but as a life style.

There are recommendations to begin repair of the system and overcoming of the insulin resistance by being on the carnivore diet or keto diet and to keep to these diets from several months to a year, depending how persistent the insulin resistance is, and then to move on to a more versatile eating, while keeping to the three main principles given above as to a life style. But there are people who keep to the carnivore or keto diet for years, and they claim that they feel well. Should you follow such recommendations? This is up to you.

Generally, carbs are not harmful. They can break the metabolic system, if they are consumed in too large quantities and too frequently. A really harmful carbohydrate is fructose, especially in pure form or in the form sugar (50% of sugar is fructose) or honey. Fructose is about as harmful as another carbohydrate – alcohol (ethanol). Fructose in whole fruits is less harmful, because its absorption into blood is limited by fibers that are present in fruits. 

When increasing consumption of fats, one needs to understand that fats are different, and our requirement of different fats is different, and some of them may be harmful. If we consume a lot of fats and not much of carbs, it is difficult to eat more fats than our organism needs (unless forced feeding is used). But it is easy to eat too much fats with a large amount of carbs. 

Diets are very popular, there is a fashion for them, and sometimes following them is similar to religion. So, before getting on one of them, it is useful to understand not only what this diet consists of and what is its goal, but also how it "works" (or does not work) for achieving its goal.