Sugar and Corn Syrup Make Us Fat; Fat Helps Us Lose Weight

Last week, I suffered from chronic headaches.  They felt like caffeine withdrawl headaches, but I hadn't been drinking caffeine. After an internet search, I realized they were from too much sugar.  I had been eating massive amounts of sugar for a week.

During my search about sugar addiction, I found this video.

And it blew my mind.

First of all, the speaker is a pediatric endocrinologist at the University of California, San Francisco.  His name is Robert Lustig M.D.  He isn't a health guru or natural foodist or wanna be nutritionist; he is a expert, a medical doctor at a recognized research hospital.

I learned a lot. 

In case you don't want to watch the full 90 min. video  or you just want a recap, I'm going to summarize key points during January.  I hope it will help you achieve better health and lose weight (if that is your goal).

I started following these principles over the past few days and I have already lost 3 lbs.

Fructose makes us fat.  Specifically, corn syrup makes us fat. Fat does not make us fat.

The myth that fat makes us fat has been around for about 30 years.  In the mid 1980s, the government came out with recommendations that we eat less fat.  The low-fat diet was born.  Americans stopped eating so much fat and corn syrup was substituted into our foods.  Lowfat snacks were introduced, like Snackwells.  Americans should have become thinner, but the opposite happened.

Instead, Americans became fatter.

Why?

Fructose prevents us from becoming satitated.  The more corn syrup we eat or drink, the hungrier we are.  When we consume fructose, it doesn't stop our hunger hormone, ghrelin from being produced.  Fructose also keeps our bodies from making leptin, the hormone which tells us we have had enough to eat.

Fructose stops our bodies' ability to tell us when we are full and lets our brains tell us we are still hungry.

Even worse, the more fructose we eat or drink, the more likely we are to develop type 2 diabetes, a metabolic syndrome.  Fructose increases blood pressure and creates fat deposits in the liver and the rest of the body.  Watch the entire video for more information.

Is sugar healthier than fructose?  No.  Sugar (sucrose) is made up of glucose and fructose. 

(Whole fruits are healthy, but contain fructose. They work differently in the body and  I will tell you how next week.)

Healthy fats, on the other hand, can actually help you lose weight. 

You read that correctly.  Healthy fats can help you lose weight.

Of course, I'm not talking about saturated fats (fat in meat) or transfats (hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated fats).  Transfats are especially dangerous to health and promote weight gain.

Monounsaturated fats found in nuts, avocados, flaxseed, and olive oil have a fatty acid which decreases appetite. 

Oleic acid is transformed into OEA by cells in the upper region of the small intestine. OEA then finds its way to nerve endings that carry the hunger-curbing message to the brain. There, it activates a brain circuit that increases feelings of fullness. In previous studies, Piomelli found that increasing OEA levels can reduce appetite, produce weight loss and lower blood cholesterol and triglyceride levels. --Science Daily

One of the most important things you can do to improve your health and lose weight is to eliminate sugar and high fructose corn syrup from your diet.

The second is to replace saturated and hydrogenated fats with healthy fats.


Later this week, I will share how to lose 15 lbs. this year by removing one item from your diet and reveal how companies hide the amount of sugar in a product.







Lowering Blood Pressure Part 1: Foods

Some things are great to inherit: money, Great-Grandma's wedding ring, blond hair.  There are other things I  don't like that were passed on to me by my family like Type 2 Diabetes risk, myopia, and low-enamel on my teeth.  Hypertension or high blood pressure is one of those inherited conditions my husband wasn't spared. Someone in his family called me last night wanting to know what can be done about hypertension through diet and supplements.  This is the first of two posts on the subject. 

Let's start with foods that should be avoided: 


1.  Vegetables canned in salt
2.  Smoked or cured meats
3.  Buttermilk, cheese, and cheese spreads
4.  Instant or processed foods, packaged meals, regular canned soups
5.  Condiments with added sodium (check labels)
6.  White sugar 
7.  Table salt

[everystockphoto.com]

Now that we have eliminated the foods that raise blood pressure, what foods can we eat to lower blood pressure?

1.  Spinach and green leafy vegetables (sources of calcium and magnesium), unsalted nuts (especially sunflower seeds), beans (black, white, navy, lima, pinto, kidney) (due to magnesium and potassium)
2.  Baked white potato, banana, soybeans (again, due to potassium.  DO NOT TAKE POTASSIUM SUPPLEMENTS UNLESS PRESCRIBED BY YOUR DOCTOR.  Potassium supplements can cause life-threatening complications with blood pressure.)
3.  Dark chocolate (nitric oxide relaxes blood vessels and increases blood flow)
4.  Fiber (gel-forming soluble fiber)
5.  Vegetables and spices (celery, garlic, onion, tomato, broccoli, carrot, saffron, and assorted spices)
6.  Avocados (oleic acid lowers cholesterol and contains potassium and folate which benefit heart health)
*7.  Skim milk (due to calcium and vitamin D, which can be found in some non-dairy milks. Skim milk is the least effective of the foods listed above.)
*Vitamin D is also produced by sunlight, which is DAIRY-FREE!  

"If you're fair skinned, experts say going outside in the [spring, summer, and fall]  for 10 minutes in the midday sun—in shorts and a tank top with no sunscreen—will give you enough radiation to produce about 10,000 international units of the vitamin."  [usnews.com]

There are two ways to lower blood pressure by diet.  First, stop eating heavily processed and salted foods, dairy, meats, and sugar.  Second, eat more vegetables (especially green leafy vegetables), nuts, bananas, beans, and avocados.  These are both fundamentals of a vegan raw food diet.

Sources:  
[thebloodpressurecenter.com]
[methodsofhealing.com]
[healthcentral.com]
[msnbc]
[harvardmedicalschool]

Though my husband inherited high blood pressure, I inherited low blood pressure.  What health conditions did you inherit through your family?  How do you treat them?