Sugar, carbs and cancer links

In August of 2016, the New England Journal of Medicine published a striking report on cancer and body fat: Thirteen separate cancers can now be linked to being overweight or obese, among them a number of the most common and deadly cancers of all - colon, thyroid, ovarian, uterine, pancreatic and (in postmenopausal women) breast cancer.

November 2, 2017 by Sam Apple, Los Angeles Times

Earlier this month, a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention added more detail: Approximately 631,000 Americans were diagnosed with a body fat-related cancer in 2014, accounting for 40 percent of all cancers diagnosed that year.

Increasingly, it seems not only that we are losing the war on cancer, but that we are losing it to what we eat and drink.

These new findings, while important, only tell us so much. The studies reflect whether someone is overweight upon being diagnosed with cancer, but they don't show that the excess weight is responsible for the cancer. They are best understood as a warning sign that something about what or how much we eat is intimately linked to cancer. But what?

The possibility that much of our cancer burden can be traced to diet isn't a new idea. In 1937, Frederick Hoffman, an actuary for the Prudential Life Insurance Co., devoted more than 700 pages to a review of all the medical thinking on the topic at the time. But with little in the way of evidence, Hoffman could only guess at which of the many theories might be correct. If we've made little progress since then in pinpointing specific foods that cause cancer, it's in large part because nutrition studies aren't well-suited to cracking the problem.

A cancer typically arises over years, or decades, making the type of study that might definitively establish cause and effect - an experiment in which people are randomly assigned to different diets - nearly impossible to carry out. The next-best option - observational studies that track what a specific group of individuals eats and which members of the group are later diagnosed with cancer - tends to generate as much confusion as knowledge. One day we read that a study has linked eating meat to cancer; a month later, a new headline declares the exact opposite.

And yet researchers have made progress in understanding the diet-cancer connection. The advances have emerged in the somewhat esoteric field of cancer metabolism, which investigates how cancer cells turn the nutrients we consume into fuel and building blocks for new cancer cells.

Largely ignored in the last decades of the 20th century, cancer metabolism has undergone a revival as researchers have come to appreciate that some of the most well-known cancer-causing genes, long feared for their role in allowing cancer cells to proliferate without restraint, have another, arguably even more fundamental role: allowing cancer cells to "eat" without restraint. This research may yield a blockbuster cancer treatment, but in the meantime it can provide us with something just as crucial - knowledge about how to prevent the disease in the first place.

Lewis Cantley, the director of the Cancer Center at Weill Cornell Medicine, has been at the forefront of the cancer metabolism revival. Cantley's best explanation for the obesity-cancer connection is that both conditions are also linked to elevated levels of the hormone insulin. His research has revealed how insulin drives cells to grow and take up glucose (blood sugar) by activating a series of genes, a pathway that has been implicated in most human cancers.

The problem isn't the presence of insulin in our blood. We all need insulin to live. But when insulin rises to abnormally high levels and remains elevated (a condition known as insulin resistance, common in obesity), it can promote the growth of tumors directly and indirectly. Too much insulin and many of our tissues are bombarded with more growth signals and more fuel than they would ever see under normal metabolic conditions. And because elevated insulin directs our bodies to store fat, it can also be linked to the various ways the fat tissue itself is thought to contribute to cancer.

Having recognized the risks of excess insulin-signaling, Cantley and other metabolism researchers are following the science to its logical conclusion: The danger may not be simply eating too much, as is commonly thought, but rather eating too much of the specific foods most likely to lead to elevated insulin levels - easily digestible carbohydrates in general, and sugar in particular.

This is not to say that all cancers are caused by too much insulin or that we should never eat sugar again. Michael Pollak, a metabolism researcher and director of cancer prevention at McGill University in Canada, says that the best approach to sugar is to think of it like a spice - something to occasionally sprinkle on foods, as opposed to an ingredient in nearly every meal and too many drinks.

Nutrition is an inherently messy science. But recent advances in cancer metabolism research are sending us an increasingly clear message about our diet. Winning the war on cancer may depend upon whether we're ready to hear it.

 Explore further: Obesity linked to 13 types of cancer (Update)

Journal reference: New England Journal of Medicine

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2017-11-sugar-carbs-cancer-links.html

Why Checking Your Iron Level Is so Crucial for Optimal Health - MUST READ

• One in 3 reading this likely has a serious overload of a mineral that may be more dangerous to your health than lack of vitamin D. That mineral is iron.  Iron overload is incredibly common and likely as dangerous to your health as vitamin D deficiency, as it creates excessive free radicals that damage your mitochondrial DNA, cell membranes and electron transport proteins. 

June 12, 2016 

Story at-a-glance

• Iron overload is incredibly common and likely as dangerous to your health as vitamin D deficiency, as it creates excessive free radicals that damage your mitochondrial DNA, cell membranes and electron transport proteins
• Iron overload is easily diagnosed by measuring your serum ferritin. Lab normal levels are correct and should be between 20 and 80 ng/ml; between 40 and 60 ng/ml is the sweet spot
• Iron overload is easy and inexpensive to treat. Most adult men and non-menstruating women would benefit by donating blood two to three times per year to keep their mitochondria healthy

By Dr. Mercola

One in 3 reading this likely has a serious overload of a mineral that may be more dangerous to your health than lack of vitamin D. That mineral is iron.

Making matters worse, few physicians fully appreciate the danger of excess iron, which Gerry Koenig, former chairman of the Iron Disorders Institute and the Hemochromatosis Foundation,1 discusses in this interview. Koenig’s personal story is a powerful illustration of what can happen to someone with excess iron.

Approaching his 50th birthday, he'd lost a lot of weight, worked out, and felt healthy. By age 55, he was in good shape, but he did drink more than recommended. Eventually, during a physical exam, he found out his liver enzymes were high.

"The doctor recommended I stop drinking," Koenig says. "I stopped drinking. But I got sick again ... Turned out I had hemolytic anemia. My red blood cells were breaking down.

I didn't know what that meant, nor, apparently, did my doctor. They never tested my iron ... Finally I had an episode where I went to the hospital. I had encephalopathy, a pretty serious condition ... They said I would need a new liver.

I didn't get an iron test until the eve of my liver transplant in 2005 ... By chance I ran across a Scientific American article. It described something called hemochromatosis, which I didn't know anything about. I decided I would have the test.

As it turns out, I have a single gene for one of the variants for hemochromatosis — C282Y. Because of that, I decided to look into it more and started researching it ... I've been doing that for the last 11 years."

Are You at High Risk for Iron Overload?

Most all adult men and non-menstruating women have damaging levels of iron. However, there is a genetic disorder called hemochromatosis which causes your body to accumulate excessive and dangerously damaging levels of iron.

If left untreated, it can damage your organs and contribute to cancer, heart disease, diabetes, neurodegenerative diseases and many other disorders.

The good news is iron overload is easy and inexpensive to treat. By monitoring your serum ferritin and/or gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase (GGT) levels, avoiding iron supplements and donating blood on a regular basis, you can avoid serious health problems.

Sadly, many doctors are severely underinformed about iron overload. Hence the problem tends to go undetected.

How High Is Too High?

The serum ferritin test measures your stored iron. I strongly recommend all adults to get your iron tested (serum ferritin test) on an annual basis. I believe iron overload is every bit as dangerous to your health as vitamin D deficiency.

Just don't make the mistake of going by what's considered "normal."2 In some labs, a level of 395 nanograms per milliliter (ng/ml) falls within the normal range, which is FAR too high for optimal health. In reality, you're virtually guaranteed to develop disease at that level.

Ideally, your serum ferritin should be somewhere between 20 and 80 ng/ml, certainly no higher than that. As a general rule, somewhere between 40 and 60 ng/ml is the sweet spot for adult men and non-menstruating women.

Unfortunately, few besides children, premenopausal women who lose blood through monthly menstruation, and those with acute blood loss like a bleeding ulcer, have these ideal levels.

"Even some premenopausal women (if they're not under control) will go up to 60 or 70, which is dangerous if they get pregnant. There's a greater chance of poor outcomes in the pregnancy.

The U.S. is 35th in the world in infant survival. It's a terrible situation when you look at the numbers. There's no reason for this. There's no reason for us to have a population that's so unhealthy given the access to medical care that we have,"Koenig says.

Again, if your iron level is high, the solution is to simply donate your blood. If you're an adult male, you'll want to donate blood two to three times a year once your levels are normal. If ferritin levels are over 200 ng/ml, a more aggressive phlebotomy schedule is recommended.

Although your local blood bank may not realize this, recent U.S. legislation allows all blood banks to perform therapeutic phlebotomy for hemochromatosis or iron overload. All you need is a doctor's order.

Recommended Lab Tests

While a full iron panel that checks serum iron, iron-binding capacity and ferritin can be helpful, you really only need the serum ferritin test. It's fairly inexpensive — typically less than $40.

Your doctor can write you a prescription for it, or you can order it from Koenig's website, HealtheIron.com. They recently also added a (GGT) test.

GGT measures liver enzymes, which can tell you if you have liver damage. It can also be used as a screening marker for excess iron. The free iron measured by GGT is also great indicator of sudden cardiac death.

"If you only took that marker (GGT), you have an indication of iron that's not well-bound. When you have iron in the serum, it's generally bound by transferrin, which carries two iron atoms through the serum.

Ferritin can hold 4,000 to 4,500 iron molecules and put those inside the cells. If those measures are high, they’re risky, because you don’t know how well your body is going to hold on to that iron when the cells fall apart over time hemolysis or catabolism.

Our diet is the biggest factor today that's really causing this problem. It's not so much that we're eating too much iron; it's that the iron we have in our body effectively can harm us. That's where the GGT comes in. It's a surrogate measure of free iron."

For women, a healthy GGT level is around 9 U/L, whereas the high end of "normal" GGT lab ranges are generally 40 to 45 U/L for women. For men, Koenig recommends a level of 16 U/L (normal lab ranges for men is 65 to 70 U/L).3

"Women with GGT above 30 U/L have higher risk of cancers — breast cancer, all kinds of cancers — and they will have high risk of autoimmune disease," Koenig warns.

What Causes Excess Iron Buildup?

Besides having one or both genes for hemochromatosis, you may also end up with high iron levels for the simple fact that most people don't excrete iron very well. So what's the biology behind iron loading?

Ninety percent of the energy your body creates is by burning carbs or fat with oxygen in your mitochondria to produce adenosine triphosphate (ATP). You need oxygen to burn the fuel because it goes through the Krebs cycle. Ninety-five percent of the time, oxygen is converted to water.

But anywhere from 0.5 to 5 percent of the time, you're going to develop what's called a reactive oxygen species (ROS). The first one is superoxide, which then transforms to the next ROS, which is hydrogen peroxide.

Here's the key: when you have excess iron in your blood, the chemical reaction (Fenton's reaction) doesn't produce water. Instead, the excessive iron catalyzes the formation of hydroxyl free radicals, which are the most potent and destructive free radicals known to man. They will decimate your mitochondrial DNA, mitochondrial electron transport proteins and cellular membranes.

This is how iron overload accelerates every major disease we know of. That's how it causes the pathologies, especially in liver and cardiovascular disease. Believe me, very few health care professionals understand the molecular biology of this reaction, which is why virtually no one is sounding the alarm about excessive iron levels. This is why you need to share this article with your friends and family as you can literally save many of their lives.

It is absolutely vital to confirm that you have safe iron levels, and once they are in a safe range, continue to monitor them so they don't rise. Remember, you don't have to have hemochromatosis to be affected. According to Koenig, iron levels have literally DOUBLED in the general population over the past four decades.

“Serum ferritin was not measured for the first National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES I,4 1971 to 1974) was done. But during NHANES II5 (1976 to 1980), they measured ferritin. The male serum ferritin was under 100 nanograms per milliliter (ng/ml). Now the median is close to 200 ng/ml. In some minorities, it’s a lot higher ...

If you look at the scales of premature death and infant mortality in African-Americans versus whites, that big difference can be accounted for by this one element. Hispanic-Americans live longer than white Americans. They also handle the iron a little bit better,” Koenig says.

Beware of High Iron, High-Carb Diet Combination

If you eat a lot of net carbs (total carbs minus fiber), the situation is exacerbated. Unfortunately, most reading this are burning carbs as their primary fuel, which adds another 30 to 40 percent more ROS on top of the hydroxyl free radicals generated by the presence of high iron.

"What people generally have when they eat better, in terms of slowing those little fires down before they become a raging fire, are antioxidants," Koenig says. "The most important one is glutathione. If you don't have good cellular health, including glutathione, those fires (inflammation) will just self-ignite and you'll have a chain reaction of effects that go on until you're really sick.

That happened to me. I got peripheral neuropathy. They try to say it's a diabetic problem, and I never had diabetes. Both of my legs were on fire. The pain was unbelievable. You wind up going to a specialist for that, a neurologist. But when the membranes on your neurological system essentially flare up and melt, the pain is unbearable. But nobody connected that to the iron."

Hemochromatosis, Another Iron-Damaging Disease

About 1 in 3.5 or an estimated 100 million people in the U.S. have the single gene for hemochromatosis. But not all of them get sick with an iron overload disorder. If you have both genes for hemochromatosis, then your risk of developing iron overload and associated health problems rises significantly.

Approximately 1 million people have the double gene variant (C282Y/C282Y), which is considered the genotype most predictive of liver disease complications. However, this only becomes a serious problem if significant iron overload occurs before a diagnosis is achieved and proper treatment can be administered.

Each year there are roughly 36,000 deaths from liver diseases and about 6,000 liver transplants. Most all of these cases are affected by excess iron, whether or not they have a hemochromatosis genotype.

The primary cause for liver transplantation and liver death is non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), a condition that can advance to non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) and cirrhosis. Excess dietary fructose is likely a primary contributor or initiator to NAFLD these days (especially in children and young adults), but high iron is another major culprit that triggers insulin resistance and disease progression.

Certainly, if you combine a high-sugar diet with excess iron, you’re asking for trouble. That will create a powerfully poisonous, deadly synergy that will accelerate just about any pathology. If you’ve read this far, you probably know more about this problem than your physician. High iron simply isn’t brought to their attention in the medical literature. The reason I know about it is because I’ve been personally affected.

My dad has beta-thalassemia and he gave me the gene, which is a form of hemolytic anemia (similar to sickle cell anemia). As a result of that, my red blood cells die faster than normal, and I’m prone to excess iron. My dad had a ferritin level of 800 when I diagnosed him 20 years ago.

He would be dead by now if we hadn’t taken measures to correct it. He’s now 90 years old. He was recently hospitalized with pneumonia. His doctor did an iron test, which came back “low,” despite being well over 200 ng/ml! They were about to give him an iron injection when my sister intervened and stopped them. Had she not been there, he might have ended up another medical error statistic.

Key Treatment Points

To reiterate, the three keys to control this situation are:

1. Lower your net carb intake and increase your consumption of healthy fats, including animal-based omega-3, to switch over to fat-burning mode and protect your mitochondria. This will help to radically reduce reactive oxygen species (ROS) and secondary free radical production.
2. Regularly screen for iron overload with a serum ferritin or GGT level to confirm that you don't have excess iron, and if you do, donate blood to lower your levels.
3. If you are an adult male or non-menstruating woman, make sure that you donate your blood at least twice a year.

Relying on antioxidants to indiscriminately suppress ROS can backfire, as ROS also act as important signaling molecules. They're not all bad. They cause harm only when produced in excess. You're better off lowering the production of them rather than squelching them after they're produced.

So optimize your ROS levels biologically rather than relying on vitamins and supplements. Eating healthy fats can make a bigger difference than you might think, especially if you have high iron. Koenig explains:

"There was a very interesting group of studies on captive U.S. Navy dolphins. The dolphins had metabolic syndrome. Very, very high ferritin (serum iron). They were unhealthy. Metabolic syndrome in any population is a sign of potential risk of going from diabetes to heart disease. They cured it by providing them good fish to have plenty of fats, where they had been getting fish with poor fats ...

If anybody remembers the film 'Lorenzo's Oil,' that's where children have brain damage as a result of having this metabolism that doesn't create a good mixture of fatty acids in the cell linings. If the cell linings are damaged, particularly if it happens in the brain ... you're going to get hurt

... If you have leakage of iron from subcells, lysosomes, and/or red blood cells (hemolysis) ... it will shoot the ferritin level up high as an indication of risk. That’s when action should be taken. But it’s hard to find specialists. We need a couple of thousand general practitioners who know about this.”

Be Mindful of Food Combos That Promote Iron Retention

Here are a few other tips and suggestions regarding diet. Eating vitamin C-rich food with a meal that has iron will increase iron absorption. If you're anemic, this might be a good thing, but if you struggle with high iron, avoid combining foods high in vitamin C and iron. On the other hand, calcium will bind to iron, limiting absorption.

It impairs iron, so to speak, so if your iron is high, consider eating iron-rich foods with foods high in calcium. Interestingly, curcumin (derived from turmeric) acts as a potent chelator of iron and can be a useful supplement if your iron is elevated.

"For most people that works well. Your body is designed to not over-absorb non-heme iron, which is elemental iron. That's the iron inside vegetables and fruits. If you do something to enhance that absorption, the body will take it in.

The iron from meats you can’t control very well. We’re the only country in the developed world, together with Canada, to put 44 parts per million of elemental iron in our grains and flours.  The other one is the U.K. They put 16.5 parts per million. That’s a lot of iron, and [many] don’t need it,” Koenig says.

More Information

To learn more, I recommend visiting HealtheIron.com, where you can also order your serum ferritin and GGT tests or either of their special FeGGT-LifePRO™ test panels. If either serum ferritin or GGT is elevated, you need to take action. The treatment couldn't be simpler. Unless you're a menstruating woman, simply donate blood two to three times a year. If you cannot donate blood due to restrictions for hemochromatosis, get your doctor to write you a prescription for therapeutic phlebotomy.

Every blood bank can do that for you and many will do it free of charge, so shop around. Otherwise, a typical charge ranges from $30 to $90, which is still fairly inexpensive considering the health benefits. Most people with moderate iron overload will require no more than two or three such treatments a year to keep this risk under control.

There's also a really informative book called "Dumping Iron: How to Ditch This Secret Killer and Reclaim Your Health," which is a well written and easy to understand resource. Remember, high iron may not only be as common, or more, than low iron. It's also more dangerous, and may actually be a factor in a significant number of diabetes, heart disease and cancer cases.

Unfortunately, nearly every physician is still clueless about this, and so you need to be your own advocate if you suspect (or know) your iron is too high.

I believe correcting elevated iron levels may be just as important, if not more so, than optimizing your vitamin D. If you have high iron, you definitely have the pedal to the metal when it comes to speeding up disease and aging. Koenig is a perfect example. He ended up needing a liver transplant as a result of iron overload. In conclusion, Koenig notes:

"If your doctor tells you that you have fatty liver disease, you probably have high iron, high ferritin. He probably will not test you for that. Get the test. You can see some benefit by donating blood, or changing your diet. On my website, I have about 700 publications. If you want to dig into it, it's a section. Find out how to reduce [your iron] by diet alone. It's been done and done successfully."

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2016/06/12/iron-overload-disorder.aspx

MUST READ: Obesity Is a Biochemical Problem Rooted in Excessive Fructose Consumption

And if you overconsume it, it's taking a hammer to your pancreas, liver and brain on a daily basis - affecting your body in much the same way as alcohol. It's the reason why 4 in 10 normal weight suffer from this "pudgy" disease.

June 25, 2016

Story at-a-glance

• Six million American children were overweight or obese in 2001. Today, that number exceeds 23 million. Clearly, the dietary recommendations provided to the public over the past 15 years are deeply flawed
• While 80 percent of the obese population is sick, metabolic dysfunction affects normal weight people as well. About 40 percent of normal weight individuals have the same health problems as those who are obese
• The real problem is not obesity but rather metabolic syndrome, which is caused by excessive fructose consumption; 80 percent of all foods sold in the U.S. contain high fructose corn syrup and other added sugars

By Dr. Mercola

Dr. Robert Lustig’s 2009 video "Sugar: The Bitter Truth," has now garnered nearly 6.5 million views on YouTube. The featured video is a follow-up on that original lecture.

In it, he discusses the metabolic influence of sugar and processed foods on obesity and related diseases. He also reviews the importance of diet versus exercise when weight loss is your goal.

Delving into the science behind different types of sugar, Lustig explains the metabolic differences between glucose and fructose, which is at the very heart of the obesity and diabetes problems.

What Do Rising Obesity and Diabetes Rates Suggest?

According to Lustig, 6 million American children were overweight or obese in 2001. Today that number exceeds 23 million.1 This is despite all the anti-obesity campaigns and measures launched since then.

Clearly, nutritional and weight loss recommendations provided to the public over the past 15 years are deeply and fundamentally flawed.

Worldwide, obese people now outnumber the starving by 30 percent. Fifteen years ago, this statistic was the reverse. Today, 5 percent of the global population is also diabetic. According to Lustig, these kinds of statistics suggest that obesity and diabetes are not due to behavior, but rather exposure.

If the trends continue, it’s been estimated that by 2030, 42 percent of Americans will be obese, and 100 million Americans — nearly one-third of the current population — will have diabetes by 2050. Meanwhile, Medicare is expected to be broke by 2026.

The fact of the matter is we’ve been following the same reasoning for the past 30 years, and the problem of obesity and diabetes keeps getting worse by the year. It is time to reframe how we view the problem, and how we resolve it.

Visceral Versus Subcutaneous Obesity

While 80 percent of the obese population is sick, it’s important to realize that metabolic dysfunction affects normal weight people as well. In fact, about 40 percent of normal weight individuals have the same health problems as those who are obese.

Lustig shows a cross-section image of the internal abdominal cavity of two individuals. They both weigh the same, yet one is healthy and the other is not. The one struggling with health issues has far more visceral fat — the fat that accumulates around the internal organs.

The number on your scale does not tell you how your fat is distributed. It also cannot tell you how much of your weight is due to fat (subcutaneous fat, which is not necessarily bad for your health and visceral fat, which is quite hazardous), and how much is bone or muscle.

Your waist circumference can give you a decent clue, but even this measurement isn’t foolproof, as there are many thin people who fall into the “thin on the outside and fat on the inside” category, a condition referred to as TOFI.

Those with TOFI have the same health problems as obese people, including high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease.

In short, obesity in and of itself is not the root cause of failing health worldwide. It’s merely another symptom. The real problem is metabolic syndrome, which accounts for 75 percent of all healthcare dollars spent in the U.S. Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of symptoms that include:

Diabetes	Hypertension	Lipid abnormalities	Cardiovascular disease
Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD)	Polycystic ovarian disease	Cancer	Dementia

Obesity and the Law of Thermodynamics

The law of thermodynamics says that “the total energy inside a closed system remains constant.” Obesity is said to be a result of this law. However, there are two different interpretations of this law.

1.The calories-in, calories-out interpretation. According to this interpretation, you have to use up the calories you ingest, or else the excess calories will turn into body fat and result in weight gain.

If this interpretation was correct, then the solution to weight gain would be a matter of energy balance, which is what the processed food and soda industries would like you to believe.

Since excess food consumption and lack of exercise are both behaviors, based on this interpretation, obesity is caused by personal shortcomings or choice.

The dogma associated with this interpretation is that “a calorie is a calorie,” and it doesn’t matter where the calories come from because they all produce the same results.

2.The energy deposition interpretation. If you accept that calories are NOT created equal and that obesity is the result of aberrant energy deposition, you can interpret the law of thermodynamics in a whole new way.

Essentially, in order to store fat, you have to increase your insulin level, and in order to raise your insulin you have to eat foods that cause it to spike.

As your insulin level becomes chronically elevated, insulin resistance sets in, which facilitates fat deposition. What foods raise insulin? The scientific evidence tells us that the most effective food source to raise insulin is fructose. 

But there’s more. As previously explained by Zoe Harcombe, Ph.D, thermodynamics is about the movement of energy. The second law of thermodynamics says that “energy will be lost and energy will be used up in creating available energy,” and the thermic effects of nutrients vary.

For example, the thermic effect of protein, i.e. the energy used up in making protein available to your body, is somewhere around 25 to 30 percent whereas the thermic effect of carbohydrates is around 6 to 8 percent. In addition to that, your body self-regulates based on available energy.

If this interpretation is correct, and Lustig insists it is, the solution to weight gain has nothing to do with “energy balance.” Instead, the answer is to eat real food, which are low in sugar (and devoid of HFCS) and high in fiber and healthy fats.

Moreover, it removes the stigma that obese people are simply gluttonous and lazy, as behavior follows biochemical reactions and not the other way around. Ultimately, this interpretation reveals that obesity is a problem caused by a toxic (and addictive) food environment, not behavior.

Obesity Is a Biochemical Problem

To recap, Lustig persuasively argues that the primary reason causing all of these visceral fat-related health problems is excessive fructose in our diet. Granted, ALL sugars contribute to weight gain to a certain degree, but highly refined and processed fructose, such as high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), wreaks the most biochemical havoc, by negatively affecting your leptin and insulin sensitivity, which results in metabolic syndrome.

Leptin deficiency, a hereditary medical condition that affects about 14 people in the entire world, causes extreme obesity as the lack of this satiety hormone makes the brain think it’s starving all the time. What most people suffer with today is leptin resistance— a condition in which your body has lost its ability to register the signals from leptin. Still, the effect is much the same.

Leptin resistance, just like leptin deficiency, also causes you to become lethargic, as the brain doesn’t want to expend any energy when it believes it doesn’t have the energy to waste. So, as Lustig explains, obesity is a biochemical problem. It’s not about gluttony and sloth, which are largely voluntary behaviors.

According to his research, it’s quite clear that biochemistry drives behavior, so gluttony and sloth are the downstream results of biochemical dysfunction. They’re not the cause of the biochemical dysfunction.

Other Dietary Considerations

I have not had a chance to discuss this with Lustig and I’m not sure if his position has changed since he recorded this video, but I believe there are two other considerations that may be as significant, or even more of a contributing factor than sugar. Believe me, I’m a strong advocate of avoiding sugar, but that isn’t the entire story.

One also needs to limit protein, as excessive protein may have more of a deleterious health effect than excessive sugar. Most people would benefit from restricting the protein intake to 1 gram (gm) per kilogram (kg) of lean body mass.

So if you reduce net carbs and protein, you are only left with dietary fat, which may be one of the biggest culprits. Most of the fat people eat is unhealthy and consists of processed omega-6 vegetable oil (most of that fat is from soybean oil). In fact, the amount of soybean oil consumed in 2000 was more than 1,000 times higher than it was 100 years ago in 1900.

Insulin Blocking Leptin Is Another Factor

Leptin resistance correlates with higher amounts of body fat. So what blocks leptin from working properly? According to Lustig, once you solve that question, you solve the obesity problem. The answer to this question is insulin.

Insulin resistance produces weight gain, and there’s a biological purpose for this. During puberty and pregnancy, you need to gain excess fat for hormone production and the growth of another human being. So from a biological perspective, there are two life periods during which leptin should be blocked to allow for fat accumulation.

The problem is that for some reason, leptin is now being blocked by elevated insulin levels in a vast number of people all the time. So what causes chronically elevated insulin levels and insulin resistance? The answer is sugar, and more specifically fructose, which places a far greater metabolic burden on your body.

How Fructose Metabolism Gives Rise to Metabolic Syndrome and Obesity

A summary of fructose metabolism is as follows:

•Every cell in your body utilizes glucose. Therefore, much of it is "burned up" immediately after you consume it. When you consume glucose, your liver only has to break down 20 percent of it.

By contrast, cells don’t use fructose for energy, so 100 percent of the fructose you eat is metabolized in your liver. Your liver is the only organ equipped with a fructose transporter, called GLUT5. Rather than being used as a quick energy source, fructose is turned into free fatty acids (FFAs), very-low-density lipoprotein (VLDL, the damaging form of cholesterol), and triglycerides, which are then stored as body fat.

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.

•Fructose metabolism is very similar to ethanol metabolism, which has a multitude of toxic effects. The fatty acids created during fructose metabolism accumulate as fat droplets in your liver and skeletal muscle tissues, causing insulin resistance and NAFLD.

As your body becomes increasingly resistant to insulin, your pancreas keeps releasing ever higher amounts of insulin in an effort to curb your rising blood sugar levels. Eventually, your pancreas loses the battle; your blood sugar levels keep rising, and you end up with metabolic syndrome and full-blown diabetes.

•Fructose is the most lipophilic carbohydrate. In other words, fructose converts to activated glycerol (g-3-p), which is directly used to turn FFAs into triglycerides. The more g-3-p you have, the more fat you store. Glucose does not do this.

•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 and causes gout.

•Glucose suppresses the hunger hormone ghrelin and stimulates leptin, which suppresses your appetite. Fructose, on the other hand, does not appropriately stimulate insulin, which in turn fails to suppress ghrelin (the "hunger hormone") and blocks leptin signaling (the "satiety hormone"). The end result is overeating and insulin resistance. In short, fructose tricks your body into gaining weight by turning off your body's natural appetite-control system.

The Dose Determines the Poison

While fructose is not a toxic substance in and of itself, when it's consumed in excessive doses, your liver simply cannot metabolize it. And when the overexposure is chronic, metabolic syndrome develops, and this is true even if you’re not obese.

In short, fructose overconsumption damages your pancreas, liver and brain much like alcohol does, yet, despite its similarities, alcohol is regulated and fructose is not. As Lustig says, “You’d never consider giving your kid a beer, but you wouldn’t think twice about giving him a Coke, yet they do the same thing. That’s the problem.”

Another problem relates to the Maillard reaction, i.e., the browning reaction that occurs when glucose chemically interacts with the amino acid group of proteins.

This is what you see when you look at a piece of deep-fried chicken or a piece of toast, for example. Now, the Maillard or browning reaction also takes place inside your body. It’s a normal part of the aging process. The question is, how fast will this happen inside your body? The answer: the higher your fructose intake, the faster this chemical reaction takes place and the faster you age.

Diabetes Rates Correlate to Sugar Availability

By conducting an economic analysis of diet and diabetes prevalence, Lustig’s team was able to determine that changes in sugar availability were the only factor that correlated with changes in diabetes prevalence. For every 150 calorie increase, there was a 0.1 percent increase in diabetes. However, if those 150 calories came from soda, diabetes prevalence increased 11-fold, to 1.1 percent.

Extrapolating data further, Lustig claims that 25 percent of diabetes worldwide is attributable to sugar alone — not obesity or total calorie consumption, but sugar consumption specifically. Moreover, his research reveals how long it takes for increases in sugar consumption to translate into increases in diabetes. No matter which country you look at, three years after a spike in sugar consumption, diabetes rates rise.

“We have causal medical inference that sugar causes obesity,” Lustig says, which means that while more research is always needed, we already have enough evidence to act.

Sugar Is a Highly Addictive Substance

Adding insult to injury, sugar is also addictive. In fact, it’s been shown to be more addictive than cocaine. Sugar hijacks the reward center in your brain, causing brain changes identical to those in drug addicts and alcoholics. A critical player in all forms of addiction, including food addiction, is the neurotransmitter dopamine.

Groundbreaking research into addiction has revealed that you will not feel pleasure or reward unless dopamine binds with its receptor, called the D2 receptor, which is located all throughout the reward center in your brain. When dopamine links to this receptor, immediate changes take place in brain cells and then you experience a "hit" of pleasure and reward.

However, when you indulge in too much of any hyper-stimulator, be it cocaine, alcohol, sugar or caffeine, your brain's reward center notes that you're overstimulated, which the brain perceives as adverse to survival, and so it compensates by decreasing your sense of pleasure and reward. It does this by downregulating your D2 receptors, basically eliminating some of them.

But this survival strategy creates another problem, because now you don't feel anywhere near the pleasure and reward you once had when you began your addiction, no matter whether it's food or drugs. As a result, you develop tolerance which means that you want more and more of your fix, but never achieve the same "high" you once had. And so, cravings grow stronger. Addiction to any one substance also increases your risk of cross-addiction to other addictive substances.

Eating REAL Food Is the Answer

The concerted effort by the processed food industry to make their products as addictive as possible has the unfortunate side effect of stimulating your metabolism to burn carbs (sugar) as its primary fuel. As long as you are burning carbs as your primary fuel, you will strongly crave these types of foods.

The solution is to decrease the amount of processed foods and net carbs (total carbs minus fiber — think sugars) you eat, and replace them with real foods, i.e. high-quality whole foods, especially low net-carb vegetables.

As noted by Lustig, every single diet that works is a diet based on real food. Also remember that net carbs (i.e. non-fiber carbohydrates) need to be replaced with healthy fats to successfully achieve this metabolic switchover. Overall, a real food diet is high in fiber and healthy fats, and low in net carbs.

If you suffer from junk food cravings, especially cravings for sugar, know that intermittent fasting is one of the most effective ways to end them. Sugar cravings will dramatically diminish, if not vanish altogether, once your body starts burning fat instead of sugar as its primary fuel.

To protect your health, I recommend spending 90 percent of your food budget on real food, and only 10 percent or less on processed foods. Unfortunately, most Americans do the opposite, which is why so many struggle with junk food cravings, weight gain and poor health.

Remember, virtually ALL processed foods are loaded with HFCS. According to Lustig, of the 600,000 items in the U.S. food supply, 80 percent of them contain HFCS and other added sugars. And the reason for this is because the food industry knows that when they add sugar, you eat and buy more of it, for all the reasons discussed above.

If anyone tries to tell you "sugar is sugar," or “a calorie is a calorie,” they are way behind the times. As you can see, there are major differences in how your body processes fructose and glucose. The bottom line is: fructose leads to increased visceral fat, insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome — not to mention the long list of chronic diseases that result from it.

To learn more, please see the Institute for Responsible Nutrition’s (IRN) website, responsiblefoods.org. IRN is an organization that Lustig helped set up for the purpose of “providing medical, nutritional and legal analysis and consultation to promote personal and public health against Big Food.”

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Fructose Overload: An Easy Guide to the Hidden Fructose in Foods

It's time for you to eliminate fructose from your diet. Check out my infographic Fructose Overload, and discover which food products contain large amounts of fructose. You will be surprised to discover that many of the seemingly "innocent" and "healthy" products you buy are loaded with large amounts of fructose – and should be avoided at all costs!

I strongly urge you to read Fructose Overload – it's the first step to ensuring that you are consuming only healthy, fructose-free foods every day. Share it with your family and friends, so they, too, can avoid the many damaging effects of fructose and live a healthier life.

Discover the fructose content of common foods, beverages, sauces, and even sugar substitutes in our infographic "Fructose Overload."

Beware of Foods That Contain Toxic Amounts of Fructose!

Sweet, tasty, and satisfying – these are the usual words used to describe sugar.

I, on the other hand, think of sugar as the exact opposite: addictive, dangerous, and deadly.

Of all the foods capable of inflicting harm in your body, sugar is one of the most detrimental.

A sea of research now suggests that fructose, especially high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), is taking a devastating toll on your health. It is a MAJOR factor in the increasing rates of obesity and chronic diseases all over the world.

But if fructose is wreaking havoc on everyone's health, then why is it still found in a wide array of food products today?

Appalling Facts About Fructose

Fructose is a sweetener usually derived from corn, and is now the single largest calorie source of Americans. Fifty-five percent of sweeteners used by food and beverage manufacturers today are made from HFCS, because it's cheaper and 20 percent sweeter than regular table sugar (sucrose). In fact, the number one source of calories in the United States today is soda, which is sweetened with large HFCS amounts.

It is unsurprising that an average American now consumes roughly 47 pounds of cane sugar and 35 pounds of high-fructose corn syrup every year.

I believe that this is a cause for alarm, considering that sugar, particularly fructose, is a potent pro-inflammatory agent that creates advanced glycation end products (AGEs) and speeds up the aging process. Fructose also leads to insulin resistance and the growth of fat cells around your vital organs, which are risk factors of chronic diseases.

Just take a look at the wide array of health conditions that fructose is linked to:

• Insulin resistance and obesity
• Elevated blood pressure
• Elevated triglycerides and LDL (bad) cholesterol
• Depletion of vitamins and minerals
• Cardiovascular disease, liver disease, cancer, arthritis, and gout

And here's the sad truth: not everyone is aware that fructose lurks in most processed foods and fast foods, even in those that have been touted "sugar-free" or "low-calorie"!

Just How Much Sugar is In Your Food?

Fructose is one of the most pervasive ingredients used in various foods today – it hides in almost all processed foods, from pretzels, bologna, cheese spread, and baked goods, to condiments like Worcestershire sauce.

You might even be surprised to know that some so-called "health foods" also contain large amounts of fructose – even surpassing the amount of sugar in a Twinkie!

Even infant formulas now contain as much sugar as one can of soda – meaning, babies just a few months old are already being fed this toxic substance.

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2016/06/25/excessive-fructose-consumption.aspx