86Thousand400: Cancer, Diabetes, Obesity....Carbs

- Of the three macronutrients in our diet, only carbohydrate is completely non-essential for life

- Avoiding carbohydrate has no short - or long term effects on humans

- However humans cannot survive without a constant supply of glucose, which is an important fuel for the brain and certain other organs. But this glucose can be produced by the liver from fat and protein and does not need to be ingested as carbohydrates in our diets. "Glucogenesis", meaning the production of "new glucose" (that is, glucose that is not ingested but produced from fat and protein).

- The fact that at Pinnacle Point the only carbohydrates we ate were from fibrous bulbs of the natural Cape Flora, for the carbohydrate in those bulbs is absorbed slowly and does not cause a marked increase in blood glucose and insulin concentrations. (Low glycaemic index).

- High blood glucose concentration is very toxic for human tissues because glucose damages the structure of all proteins. The only protective mechanism humans have developed is to secrete insulin whenever carbohydrate is ingested and the blood glucose concentration begins to rise

- Under the action of insulin, ingested glucose is either used immediately as an energy fuel or stored in the muscles.

- And any carbohydrate that cannot be removed, must be converted immediately into fat.

- First in the liver before being transported to the fat tissues for storage as fat. In order to maximise this use of carbohydrate, insulin also prevents fat from being used as a fuel. Hence insulin is the hormone of both fat building and fat storage (by preventing its use as a fuel)

- But the efficiency with which these processes occur in each of us is determined by the degree to which we are Iunsulin Resistant (IR) or its opposite, insulin sensitive

- The degree of IR differs markedly in different humans and in different populations. In its most extreme form, IR is the key abnormality

present in T2DM

- Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus (T1DM) occurs in persons at a younger age, often children, who lose their capacity to produce insulin usually as a result of viral damage to the insulin secreting cells of the pancreas

- Those with the most severe IR will develop severe obesity and T2DM at the youngest age; those with mild IR may notice only that they struggle to control their weight and that their blood pressure tends to rise as does their fasting blood glucose concentration as they pass beyond middle-age

- Perhaps more important is the idea that IR is the hidden metabolic abnormality underlying many of the chronic diseases currently reaching epidemic proportions in modern humans and which includes obesity, T2DM, high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol concentrations and heart disease

- Highly processed, carbohydrate rich foods are the exact foods that those with IR are the least able to metabolise safely

- It was the state of IR that best preserved us through those tough years at Pinnacle Point

Insulin Resistance

- Reduced capacity to store and use carbohydrate as a fuel

- Increased blood glucose and insulin responses to ingested carbohydrate

- Increased conversion of excess ingested carbohydrate into fat in the liver and into blood triglycerides for storage as fat in adipose tissue

- Present as a genetic predisposition that progressively worsened with age as a result of high carbohydrate/high sucrose/high fructose diet and physical inactivity

- Reduced production of "good" HDL-cholesterol

- Increased rates of glucose production in the liver

- Hypercholesterolaemia

- Hypertension

- Obesity

- Diabetes

- The common treatment of all these conditions is to reduce carbohydrate intake to less than 50 grams/day by Banting