The How’s, When’s, Where’s and Why’s of Sugar Making You Fat PART 2

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Hi there.  Last week we delved into the deepest darkest reaches of biochemistry and physiology and discovered that it’s the sugar in our diet that is making us fat and not fat as we have been led to believe by doctors, nutritionists, dieticians, some fitness professionals and even governments.  Let’s just quickly recap on what we’ve learned so far.  The hypothalamus is the primary appetite control centre.  It reacts to four major appetite hormones Insulin, Leptin & CCK (when we are full) and when we are hungry.  Proteins, carbohydrates and fats stimulate these hormones when we eat real whole foods.

However when we eat fructose in the form of soft drinks, cereals, breads, sauces, biscuits, cakes, chocolates, lollies, fruit juices, fruit smoothies, sports drinks and all fast food takeaways (cos it’s in the buns) we are consuming fructose in either sugar form which is just glucose + fructose or as in the case of the USA, High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) it does NOT stimulate these same four hormones.

It skips the fat creation control mechanism in the liver and directly converts to circulating fatty acids.  It is also invisible to our built in calorie counter.  We can eat as much fructose as we can stuff in our mouths and never feel full for long and every gram of fructose that we eat is immediately, rapidly, directly and uncontrollably converted into fat and stored!

WOW, that’s a hell of a lot to take in so my congratulations for making it this far.  However, the picture gets somewhat darker.  You see, not only is sugar and in particular fructose making us fat and by now you’ve been convinced of this, it’s also making us sick.  I’m not talking about the 2 days laid up in bed with a fever sick, I’m talking about the drop dead; kill you slowly over time sick. 

So in part two of this series of articles, I’m going to show you the How’s, When’s Where’s and Whys Sugar Makes You Sick.

DISEASES DIRECTLY RELATED TO OBESITY

We’ve already learned that eating fructose in huge quantities that we are currently consuming (51 kgs per person per year) immediately, increases circulating fatty acids and that this leads to an increase in body fat.  The stats are in and the evidence is clear.  We are all fatter than our grandparents and their grandparents.  In the US in 1910, 1 in 5 adults were overweight or obese.  That figure is now 4 in 5.  In Australia in 2000, 60% of the adult population was overweight or obese.  In 1980 that figure was only 40%.  But here’s the interesting thing.  No-one has ever died from being fat.  So obesity is NOT a disease at all as some of us would have you think.  It’s merely an underlying symptom.  So if you don’t die from being fat, what do you die of?

Some diseases are directly related to our increased body fat mass like osteoarthritis, fractures, hernia and sleep apnoea.  However those are relatively insignificant when compared to today’s mass murderers of modern society.

CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASE (CVD)

The biggest killer in Australia today is cardiovascular disease (CVD) and it is wholly attributable to blocked arteries.  These blocked arteries are formed from the exact same fatty acids created by the excessive consumption of Fructose.

In Australia, in 2008, 48,000 people died from CVD.  In that same year only 1,627 people died on our roads.  There are many different forms of CVD and the different name merely reflects the major organ that the particular arterial blockage affects and which medical specialist operates on you if you live that far. 

For example, coronary heart disease (CHD) is caused where the blood supply to the heart is reduced, by blockages feeding the heart and one symptom is increased blood pressure or hypertension.  We know that insulin is secreted when we eat to combat the rise in glucose levels in the blood stream.  We also know that insulin plays an important role in dilating those same arteries so as to lower our blood pressure when glucose levels rise.

However, if there is an elevated level of fatty acids in the blood stream, as there would be if you over consume fructose, our arteries become resistant to our insulin and so they don’t dilate.  Insulin resistance also means that the pancreas has to work harder to release more insulin to combat the negative effects of the resistance being shown to it.

Another symptom is a myocardial infarction (MI) or as we general folk know it, a heart attack.  Again MI’s are generally caused by an arterial blockage that ruptures, squirting fatty acids into the blood stream.  The body’s own self defence mechanism swoops into action by flooding the rupture with antibodies that quickly block up the rupture and in the process seal up the entire artery or causes the heart muscle to die.  The end result either way – a heart attack.  90% of all people who suffer a MI die from it so the survival stakes are not great.

Just like arterial blockages leading to the heart cause heart attacks, arterial blockages to the brain cause strokes. Blocked arteries can occur anywhere in the body; however, ones that affect the heart and brain are by far the most serious.  In saying that though in 2008, 2,500 people died from arterial blockages to these other areas, which is still almost twice as many people that died on the roads that same year.

Statistics have revealed that the number of people dying from CVD peaked in 1968 at 60% of all recorded deaths and that number has been slowly declining to around 30% today.  Some people will have you believe that the reason behind the decline was because of the reduction in saturated fat consumption during this time.  Yes it’s true; our rates of saturated fat consumption have fallen during this time from 41% in 1955 to 29% in 1989.  However, during the same period medical intervention has dramatically improved.  Prior to 1968, there was no way of treating a blocked artery.  Patients were simply admitted to hospital where they waited to die.  However, the invention of the stent in 1964 and its first implant in a heart artery in 1977 opened the flood gates.  A stent is a balloon tipped catheter that is inserted into an artery and threaded to the site of the blockage.  The balloon is then inflated creating a wider passage for blood to flow.  By 2000, over 20,000 stents had been successfully implanted into patients in Australia.

Drug companies weren’t going to let the biggest health spending spree in medical history pass them by.  A whole raft of new drugs was invented to lower cholesterol and lower blood pressure in the mid 1980’s.

One important point needs to be made here.  The number of people diagnosed with CVD has NOT fallen at all.  On the contrary, it continues to grow at around 2% PA which is twice the rate of population growth.  The only thing we have managed to do is make sure we don’t die from CVD.  Both interventions that I’ve described don’t deal with the how arteries are blocked.  They simply treat the blockage.

CVD by its nature is not a high publicity front page news item.  A classic example of this is the recent death of three teenagers en-route to Schoolies in North Queensland and the tragic death of a teenager in Bali  (don’t get me started on binge drinking).  Whilst tragic and possibly preventable, the deaths made front page news here in Brisbane and our 6pm news bulletins.  Remember only 1600 people die on our roads every year compared with 38,000 from CVD.  Most CVD victims are elderly and because so many people die from it, we’ve all become immune to it all. There are two definite things in life, death and taxes and seen as how only elderly die from CVD, maybe that’s just the way it is.  And this is such a tragedy, for CVD as you are now are fully aware, is completely preventable.

TYPE II DIABETES

There’s another disease, that may just be the trigger or catalyst to make governments, politicians and those really in the know sit up and take notice and that’s type II diabetes.  The reason why this disease is different is because it affects a much younger population and it severely affects their quality of life.    Type II diabetes was even rarer than CVD in 1900 and compared with CVD’s doesn’t kill anywhere near as many people.  In 2008 3,500 Australian’s lost their lives to diabetes (again twice as many as killed on the roads) and another 8,500 from CVD where diabetes was a contributing factor.  Type II diabetes is a disease where you become resistant to your own insulin.  It’s still being made by the pancreas, but the body becomes resistant to it, requiring more and more to be made to remove glucose from the blood stream.  Studies over the past 30 years have proven that the rapid increase in circulating fatty acids caused by the fructose metabolism inhibits insulin’s ability to tell the cells that require energy to take the glucose out of the blood stream.  Either the body cannot manufacture enough insulin, or it simply can’t be utilised.  The end result, the body starves of energy in a sea of food.

The number of people in Australia suffering from type II diabetes has reached epidemic proportions in the last 25 years from just over 200,000 in 1981 to 1.3 million people in 2005.  Worldwide, almost 1 billion people will be affected by a disease that was virtually unheard of 30 years ago.

The picture gets a hell of a lot darker (excuse the pun) for some cultures.  Polynesians, Aborigines, and Native Americans are particularly susceptible to the effects of prolonged insulin resistance.  Take for example, my own race, the New Zealand Maori.  1 in 5 deaths of my own people is directly attributed to the result of diabetes, compared to 12 in 20 in the Caucasian population.  

It was when I discovered that this disease unfairly affects Maori and that its cause was excessive consumption of fructose, that my passion for preaching the anti sugar message skyrocketed through the roof.  In my own immediate family, my mother and an aunt suffered renal failure.  My mother eventually passed away in 2001 of heart failure. She’d had two kidney transplants and hundreds (yes I mean hundreds) of other medical procedures as a direct result of the concoction of drugs she was prescribed to negate the negative side effects of the other concoction of drugs she was placed on to stop the kidneys from being rejected by her body.  She was one of 8.  Only three of her siblings remain.  The other three have all died from CVD.  At their deaths, they were aged 56, 49, 56 and 57.  My generation (all of my cousins from those deceased uncles and aunts) are heading in the exact same direction as their parents and if they don’t make some changes, then they too will be gone before their 60^th birthday.  I am only 45 and I have absolutely no intention of dying before my youngest daughter finishes high school.

Type II diabetes has changed from being a relatively rare ailment only affecting the elderly to one of the major causes of premature death.  In virtually every developed society, type II diabetes is the leading cause of blindness, kidney failure and lower limb amputation and is a significant factor for death from heart disease. 

There are another set of killers that some researchers believe are also connected to fructose, or at least the fatty acids they produce.  These set of killers kill almost everyone else who don’t die from CVD, type II diabetes or on our roads.  The answer

CANCER

Cancer is a large and diverse group of diseases potentially affecting every part of the human body.  It occurs when a mechanism that controls cell reproduction becomes defective and they multiply out of control.  When this happens, cancerous cells invade and damage the tissue around them.  Cancer is never good, but it can be very very bad when it occurs near an organ.

There are almost 200 known types of cancer but just 5 of them cause over 90% of all new cases.  They are in order of death rate highest to lowest:

1. Lung cancer
2. Melanoma
3. Colorectal or bowel cancer
4. Breast cancer
5. Prostate cancer

We know that smoking causes lung cancer and too much sun causes Melanoma and now the body of research is starting to point towards fatty acids causing the other 3.  Bowel and breast cancer are directly linked to our western styled diets and the major difference between those nations that suffer from these cancers and those that don’t is co-incidentally, diet.

TOOTH DECAY

The last illness that I want to show here is the most obvious one of all.  Every dentist tells you not to eat sugar if you want to keep your teeth past 35.  The bacteria in your mouth Streptococcus Mutans (SM) (there are over 200 kinds) causes tooth decay and feeds on, yep you guessed it sugar.  Incidentally, this disease luckily does not kill you.  It also prefers a steady supply of sugar rather than receiving it in large hits so snacking on sugar laden snacks in between sugary meals seems to create the perfect feeding environment.  A cheap way of tackling this issue is fluoride in the water supply.  Does anyone see a problem with this?

WHY DOESN’T SOMEONE DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS?

Australia spends a large sum of money fixing and treating the symptoms associated with our fructose consumption.  In 2001 the following amounts were spent:

• $5.5 billion on CVD
• $1 billion on type II diabetes
• $2.9 billion on Cancer
• $3.4 billion on oral health benefits (no wonder fluoride is the preferred government option)
• $1.5 billion on osteoarthritis

That’s a total of $14.3 billion and doesn’t include lost productivity.

So what’s behind all this spending, why spend vast sums of money on treating symptoms rather than actually nipping the solution in the butt and saving billions of public spending dollars?  The answer is money and politics.  Here’s where I open a can of worms so let me try and explain. 

Most industries have a body or association that represents its interests in the public arena and ultimately the market place.  One of their functions is to ensure the growth (and survival in some instances) of its members.  An example of this is my own, Fitness Australia. FA recently waged a war against the Phonographic Performance Company of Australia (PPCA) and won a legal stoush over fees paid by fitness centres and health clubs for playing music in their facilities.  Had FA not gone into battle, it was predicted that the fee hike that the PPCA was seeking ($3.99 per member per month) would have crippled most fitness organisations and the death of a large proportion of our fitness businesses.  For my own PT studio with 150 members, that’s $598.50 per month I would’ve had to pay to play music in my studio.  Thankfully, the legal win permits our industry to continue its war on obesity.

The following is a list of just some of the associations in Australia

• Cane Growers Association of Australia,
• Australian Soft Drink Association,
• Australian Wheat Board,
• Australian Beef Association,
• Australian Medical Association,
• Australian Food and Grocery Council,
• Pharmaceutical Society of Australia and New Zealand

Are all empowered by its members to represent them in the market place.  Each represents a pretty sizable chunk in terms of income and revenue for its respective members.  Imagine what would happen if soft drinks were suddenly deemed illegal, or heavily taxed?  Imagine what would happen if the demand for sugar cane suddenly plummeted?   Imagine all of the newly trained cardiologists that would be out of work if we eliminated once and for all, arterial blockages by eliminating fructose from our food supply?  Like my own association that fought tooth and nail to stop the PPCA from hiking the fees we fitness professionals would’ve had to pay to play music in our facilities, these respective organisations would not just sit by and let their industries crumble and die.  They would fight just like FA.

Here’s a question for you, what two substances do we consume that are highly addictive because they cause a chemical dependency but are completely legal to use?  The answer alcohol and tobacco. We know smoking kills you.  It says so on the packets of cigarettes.  If this is the case, why do we permit it?  The reason, MONEY! It’s what makes the world go round.  If smoking were gone tomorrow governments would lose billions in excise duty, the tobacco industry would fold causing billions worldwide to lose their jobs, causing more loss in revenue to governments in the way of income tax.  Those same businesses that employ those workers, they would cease to pay company tax.  Do you see a reoccurring theme here?  The world’s economy simply would not survive.

Nobody blames the sugar industry for killing you (well not yet anyway) and sues you.  Remember what it was like to watch the Winfield Cup NRL League grand final on TV.  Who gets the blame when people consume tobacco?  The tobacco industry.  As a result, no more advertising on TV, at sporting events and now not even on their products.  (Plain paper cigarette packets). 

Who gets the blame for consuming sugary products?  We do. We are told that we are simply weak minded.  We have no will power to resist their products.  Sugar, like alcohol and tobacco is highly addictive.  In terms of evolution, the human species has not changed enough in the past 100,000 years to have gone from the strong minded hunter gatherer that roamed the African plains pulling down woolly mammoths to weak minded sedentary computer bound sloths who can’t say no to something that they’ve been chemically wired to get hooked on since birth.  (Most baby formulas contain added sugar)  Sugar has only been consumed in its vast quantities for the past 100 years.

SUMMARY:

WOW, again a lot to get through.  Not so scientifically gobble de gookish as last week, but still quite heavy going.  Let’s just recap:

High levels of circulating fatty acids caused by overconsumption of fructose leads directly to diseases like osteoarthritis, sleep apnoea and some fractures due to the direct increase in body mass.  However, the biggest killers of our time, CVD, type II diabetes and cancer are now also inextricably linked to the same high fatty acid levels or at least our western styled diets.  Our governments have no incentive to tackle the problem head on for it will bring down our capitalistic way of life so they throw billions at dealing with symptoms.

Next week, I’m going to show you how you can simply and easily break your addiction to sugar.  No more dieting, starving yourself or denying yourself of food.  Till then!