Friday, January 27, 2012

Fructoserant brought on by rampant stupidity amongst the GPs (excuse all the intelligent docs in the world, but im pissed)

A friend of mine got diagnosed with kidneystones today. She is extremely fit, lean, active and healthy. She does love her sweets though - she is the kind of girl that the normal girls (like me) envy - she can eat anything and not gain a gram.
Her doctor told her that the kidneystones are caused by excessive vitamin D - she takes her 5000IUD some times a week - and we do live above 60 deg latitude here. Ok, i have deep contempt for most doctors, so why should i be surprised? Im not. Im pissed. Because no blood was taken, no tests made, nobody knows her D(25)OH. And nobody cared to mention the number 1 cause of kidney stones - uric acid created by excess fructose in the diet.

This article is a good example of solid research in this field

"We documented 4902 incident kidney stones during a combined 48 years of follow-up. The multivariate relative risks of kidney stones significantly increased for participants in the highest compared to the lowest quintile of total-fructose intake for all three study groups. Free-fructose intake was also associated with increased risk. Non-fructose carbohydrates were not associated with increased risk in any cohort. Our study suggests that fructose intake is independently associated with an increased risk of incident kidney stones."
This study was the first one performed on humans and they reported that the incidence of kidney stones in both men and women was related to fructose consumption.

And kidney stones are the least of what may result from exess fructose consumption - heartdisease, metabolic syndrome, diabetes have been associated with elevated fructose consumption aswell.


ADDENDUM:

Vitamin D, Calcium and Kidney stones

I think i should also make it clear that a connection between vitamin D and kidney stones has been studied and dismissed in a Harvard study. They studied 45,616 men over 14 years for a total of 477,000 person-years of follow up. They found no increased risk of kidney stones with vitamin D intake. They did find that the incidense of kidney stones can be related to low potassium, low magnesium, high refined carbohydrates, high sodas, and a high acid residue. Everything that can result from following a standard western diet. Today, humans live in a state of low-grade metabolic acidosis that  leaches calcium from our bones, increases the amount of calcium in our urine, and causes kidney stones. However, at least two studies have linked kidney stones to latitude, with an increasing incidence of stones at lower latitudes. One also directly linked stones to sunlight. A Saudi Arabian study found kidney stones were more common in the summer. We do know that kidney stone formation can be connected to dehydration - so wouldnt the logical connection be found there? Summer >>> dehydration?????
There is a very interesting connection between calcium and kidney stones as was found when scientists at Harvard decided to follow 92 731 women taking part in the Nurses Health Study in order to find out what affects the formation of kidney stones and what protects against it.
They found that calcium from dairy products protected from them, but calcium from supplements increased the risk of developing the kidney stones. The nurses who consumed the most dietary calcium, primarily from dairy foods such as milk, cheese and ice cream, were only 65 percent as likely to develop kidney stones as the women who consumed the least dietary calcium.
At the same time, though, the nurses who took calcium supplements had a 20 percent greater risk of developing stones than women who didn't. The amount of the supplements didn't seem to make any difference.

The other primary findings of the Nurses Health Study of kidney stones:
  • Women who consumed the most sugar had higher rates of forming kidney stones than other women.
  • Those who consumed the most potassium and fluid were less likely to develop kidney stones than others.
  • Meat consumption didn't seem to have any effect on risk of stones
What my logic makes of that:
The calcium in dairy comes with fat and some vitamin D - therefore it is taken up into boneformation. The supplemented calcium doesnt - so it will gather in soft tissues and also in your bloodvesses forming kidney stones and plaque. Also vitamins C has been investigated as possible causes for kidney stones, but such proposals have been refuted.



What is fructose, why is it so dangerous?

From a biochemical perspective, fructose is a monosaccharide that is unique among other sugars. The difference is in the chemical build of the molecule. glucose, another monosacharide, for example is an "aldose" whereas fructose is a "ketose". A small but a significant difference where your liver is concerned.
where does one get that fructose from?
Heres a list of fructose content%:
  •  apple juice 65%
  • HFCS in sodas 55%
  • table sugar 50%
  • honey 38%

What does fructose do once in your body?

The way our body treats fructose is very different from the way it treats other sugars. the entire burden of metabolizing fructose falls on your liver. 
Dr Robert Lustig,professor of endocrinology at the University of California has been the leading forse behind making the ills of fructose public with his documentary "Sugar, the bitter truth", here are some main points i picked out from his work.
  • Every cell in your body, including your brain, is able to make use of glucose but that is not so with fructose. fructose is turned into triglycerides in the liver (by combining a glycerol backbone with 3 free fatty acids) which are then packed into VLDL (the truly harmful form of cholesteroltransporting proteins). The more glycerol you have, the more fat you store. 
  • The triglycerides created during fructose metabolism accumulate as fat in your liver and skeletal muscle tissues, causing insulin resistance and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Insulin resistance progresses to metabolic syndrome and type II diabetes. Fructose is the most lipophilic carbohydrate, as already explained, fructose converts to activated glycerol (g-3-p),and the more glycerol you have, the more fat you store.
  • When you eat 120 calories of glucose, less than one calorie is stored as fat. 120 calories of fructose results in 40 calories being stored as fat. 
  • The metabolism of fructose by your liver creates a long list of waste products and toxins, including a large amount of uric acid, which drives up blood pressure,causes gout and kidneydiseases.
  • Glucose suppresses the hunger hormone ghrelin and stimulates leptin, which suppresses your appetite. Fructose has no effect on ghrelin and interferes with your brain's communication with leptin, resulting in overeating.



Lets pick that apart, shall we

Fructose and fat storage 

My readers all know that highcarb/lowfat diets tend to increase triglyceride levels and promote weightgain, but the process of lipogenesis (production of fat cells) doubles after consuming fructose than after consuming glucose.

From the November 2004 issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition:

"...ingestion of large quantities of fructose has profound metabolic consequences because it bypasses the regulatory step catalyzed by phosphofructokinase.  This allows fructose to flood the pathways in the liver, leading to enhanced fatty acid synthesis, increased esterification of fatty acids, and increased VLDL secretion, which may raise serum triacylglycerols and ultimately raise LDL cholesterol concentrations."

Why does this all happen?


This is what happens when carbohydrate (glucose) enters the body:  blood glucose goes up and the glut-4-pathway is activated: >> NPY neurons of your hypothalamus signal the pancreas to release insulin>> insulin stimulates the release of leptin>> leptin suppresses ghrelin. (all of that happens if your metabolism is not damaged and you are not insulinresistant - we are talking about healthy human metabolism here). As a result of this chain reaction your hunger is suppressed.
A study done in 2008  shows that in comparison with glucose, fructose did not stimulate insulin output like this. Fructose completely bypasses this system and uses the glut-5 pathway - achieving a greatly downregulated insulin response. A blessing for the insuline resistan? Not so. It is only logical to think that the output of this chain reaction will be very different in case insulin-production is muted: ghrelin is not surpressed and you will continue feeling hungry.
The fact is that  fructose also leads to insulin resistance and as many of you know, insulin resistance has been found to lead to weight gain. Fructose has been used in laboratory studies to create insulin resistance in rats.

"Although fructose does not stimulate insulin secretion in the short term (41), the insulin resistance and obesity induced by long-term fructose feeding in experimental animals induces compensatory hyperinsulinemia. Blakely et al (93) showed significant increases in fasting serum insulin and fasting serum glucose concentrations in rats that consumed 15% of energy as fructose"

Fructose and kidney disease

During the past decade, scientists have stared to associate fructoseconsumption with uric acid exess. It is a wellknown and longknown fact that elevations in uric acid can lead to kidney stones. but these scientists found that high uric acid levels reduced nitric oxide levels, and this, in turn, contributes to inflammation, cardiovascular disease, insulin resistance and "metabolic syndrome." after that more research has come out about the connection between fructose and kidney disease and

Nakagawa T. et al 2006:

"Uric acid is strongly associated with cardiovascular and renal disease, but is usually not considered to have a causal role. However, recent experimental, epidemiological, and clinical studies provocatively suggest that uric acid may contribute to the development of hypertension, metabolic syndrome, and kidney disease in some patients. Clinical studies are urgently needed to examine this important possibility."

A University of Illinois study Nakamura et al 2008 explains further the toll fructose metabolism takes on our bodies, on our livers specifically
"In order for fructose to be metabolized, the body has to create both fasted and fed conditions. The liver is really busy when you eat a lot of fructose."
In this study, 24 rats were fed either a 63 percent glucose or fructose diet four hours a day for two weeks; at the end of this period, half the animals fasted for 24 hours before the scientists performed a gene expression analysis; the other half were examined at the end of a four-hour feeding.
Fructose feeding not only induced a broader range of genes than had previously been identified, there were simultaneous increases in glycogen (stored glucose) and triglycerides in the liver.
"To our surprise, a key regulatory enzyme involved in the breakdown of glucose was about two times higher in the fructose-fed group than in the glucose-fed group.
The study also suggests that a protein called carbohydrate response element binding protein is responsible for the fructose effect on certain genes that trigger the production of fat"
Fructose and gout

We have all heard the doctors say that gout is a lifestyle disease induces by overconsumption of meatproducts more abundant inthe diets of the well-off. If only it were so, your normal nutritionists with the lowfat/no red meat dogma should have cured the world of gout by now if that were so easy. It is true that uric acid is a breakdown product of the purines, adenine and guanine. These compounds are found in relatively high amounts in meat, but the causes of gout are a bit more complex than that:

Gout is triggered by the presence of crystals of uric acid in your joints. Many people with gout have high levels of uric acid in their blood stream. But not all! Some people with gout do not have high levels of uric acid in their blood.
Enter fructose: homo sapiens have no enzyme-system to break down fructose polymers. The only sources of fructose we can use up to a limit are the simple sugar in fruit or honey and as the molecule combined with glucose as sucrose in table sugar. Drenching your body with fructose is a recent novelty we havent simply had time to adapt to. What happens when you drench you metabolism with fructose? The first step in the fructose metabolism patway is conversion to fructose-1-phosphate. Drink a 1,5 litre of cola and you will get 100gm of fructose in your liver. This will require a large input of phosphate to for the fructose-1-phosphate, leaving very little for the generation of adenosine tri phosphate (ATP, the primary energy currency of our cells) to be made. A lack of ATP triggers activity of the degradation system for adenine and the production of, guess what, uric acid! Wellcome gout, and no steakeating fest was necessary.
Gout has been previously connected to fructose in older men but now also in younger women.


Fructose, inflammation and autoimmune disease

Fructose is the most potent reducing sugar in the human diet and if fructose makes its way into the body intact it is capable of interacting with the amino acid chains of tissue proteins. That reaction is known as glycation. Glycation of proteins can alter their function and change the structure of proteins, which can cause them to be recognized by the immune system as "foreign" thus inucing an autoimmune attack. Glycated proteins have been shown to be one of causes for atherosclerosis and in the end-organ damage seen in diabetics. Fortunately, most of the fructose we eat is converted to glucose in the intestinal wall or in the liver before it reaches the blood-circulation. Consumption of very large amounts of fructose (large sodas, overindulging in fructosecontaining sweets, dried fruit etc) overwhelms the fructose-metabolizing capacity of the liver, resulting in the spillage of fructose into the bloodstream.
In recent studies  it has been confirmed that fructose consumption in the range of the SAD (standard american diet) induces inflammatory state in the vascular and endothelila cells and decreases intracellular ATP production. 

Fructose and cardiovascular disease



Kimber Stanhope of the University of California says in this study that the Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2010 suggest an upper limit of 25 percent or less of daily calories consumed as added sugar. In this study, researchers examined 48 adults ages 18-40 and compared the effects of consuming 25 percent of one's daily calorie requirement as glucose or fructose on risk factors for cardiovascular disease. The study, published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, found that within two weeks, study participants consuming fructose or high-fructose corn syrup, but not glucose, exhibited increased concentrations of low-density lipoprotein, "bad" cholesterol, as well as triglycerides and apolipoprotein-B -- a protein that can lead to plaques that cause vascular disease.
"Our findings demonstrate that several factors associated with an elevated risk for cardiovascular disease were increased in individuals consuming 25 percent of their calories as fructose or high fructose corn syrup, but consumption of glucose did not have this effect," Stanhope says.
Uric acid promotes gout, but also hypertension and cardiovascular disease. Fructose consumption raises uric acid levels in the body and there are many studies which show uric acid is linked to heart disease:    
This Baylor College of Medicine study says:
The association between uric acid and cardiovascular disease was largely ignored until the mid-1950s and early 1960s, when it was rediscovered.2,3 Since then, a number of epidemiologic studies have reported a relation between serum uric acid levels and a wide variety of cardiovascular conditions, including hypertension,2 metabolic syndrome,4 coronary artery disease,5 cerebrovascular disease,6 vascular dementia,7 preeclampsia,8 and kidney disease.9,10 The relation between uric acid and cardiovascular disease is observed not only with frank hyperuricemia (defined as more than 6 mg per deciliter [360 μmol per liter] in women and more than 7 mg per deciliter [420 μmol per liter] in men) but also with uric acid levels considered to be in the normal to high range (>5.2 to 5.5 mg per deciliter [310 to 330 μmol per liter]).11-13

Fructose and erectile dysfunction

One of the many side-effects of fructose consumption is a massive decrease in nitric oxide production (as discussed above). Erectile problems stem from diminished nitric oxide (NO) production, poor blood pressure, hormones, low testosterone, or stress. Successful penile erection requires the relaxation of blood vessels within the penis' tissue. This relaxation and resulting engorgement of blood is triggered by a gaseous chemical our bodies produce, called nitric oxide (NO). Overconsumption of fructose raises uric acid which significantly lowers the body`s ability to produce NO.


Fructose and ageing


Just in case you haven`t been convinced to stay away from the fruit juice by now, then here is another reason. Fructose may be causing your body to age faster through a process known as glycation.As mentioned earlier, fructose is the most reactive of all monosaccharides. 
Glycation is a process where a sugar molecule binds itself to a protein molecule or a lipid molecule. The resulting molecules are called Advance Glycation Endproducts or AGEs for short. These AGEs are implicated in diabetes, muscular degeneration, cataracts, and both weakening and stiffening of collagen. Collagen is the stuff that keeps the skin supple and your blood vessels elastic. When your collagen hardens and weakens, you start accumulating wrinkles and your blood pressure starts to rise.
Your body is able to get rid of AGEs, through your kidneys and autophagy processes, but never as fast as they are formed. The kidneys can be overloaded by the AGE accumulation resulting in kidneys failure. This is a common problem with diabetics who often have excessive AGEs due to excessive glucose in their blood.
This study, published in the Journal of Nutrition already in 1998 concludes:
This study demonstrates that long-term fructose feeding accelerates aging as expressed by changes in various age-related markers measured in collagen from skin and bones. The focus on collagen is warranted because collagen is present ubiquitously, accounts for as much as 30% of body proteins, mainly in the extracellular matrix, and provides the basic functional properties of most vulnerable tissues such as renal basement membrane, the cardiovascular system and retinal capillaries. In addition, collagen has a long half-life that allows the accumulation of nutritional and age-related lesions. Glycation can affect both biochemical, mechanical and physiologic functioning of collagen. The deleterious effects of glycation on collagen play a significant role in the pathogenesis of the aging process and the late complications of diabetes (Paul and Bailey 1996).
Ok, i give up, if you werent convinced by now, go and continue with your fruitjuices, honey and agave nectar. Im tired now. Over and out.


Ok, ok just one more


Fructose and cancer

We in the paleocommunity are aware that glucose is used in the cancercells for energy as they have disfunctioning mitochondria and cant produce ATP as normal cells do. 
At the University of California they made a study looking into cancercell proliferation and they published their findings in the Journal of Cancer Research:

"These findings show that cancer cells can readily metabolize fructose to increase proliferation," Dr. Anthony Heaney of UCLA's Jonsson Cancer Center and colleagues wrote.

"They have major significance for cancer patients given dietary refined fructose consumption, and indicate that efforts to reduce refined fructose intake or inhibit fructose-mediated actions may disrupt cancer growth."

Im going home, enjoy the weekend everybody


3 comments:

  1. Could kidney stones be formed due to crystallisation of salts probably due to increased concentration of urine (insufficient dilution)...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. ofcourse that is the conventional belief and it is true - increased sweating and dehydration definately contribute to kidney stones. but it is extremely difficult to dehydrate yourself enough to achieve that without some other underlying cause...like for example overconsumption of calcium...fructose etc

      Delete
  2. YOu wrote "... Overconsumption of fructose raises uric acid which significantly lowers the body`s ability to produce NO." But we know that eliminating fructose will not make viagra etc. unnecessary OVERNIGHT. How long to restore normal NO production? Example: I suffered from bad angina and already after 2 weeks on a very low carb diet all symptoms were nearly gone, later gone completely.
    A NO producing medication (Nicorandil) did alleviate problems completely acutely, so we know NO was one problem.
    Is the long term damage and potential repair to NO production documented anywhere, or is it just to eliminate fructose and wait a few months and no need for Viagra?

    ReplyDelete

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