Here's How Sugar Metabolism Works | Preventing Alzheimer's Disease

<Here's How Sugar Metabolism Works | Preventing Alzheimer's Disease

Susan Eats a Peach

In order to more fully understand how CRH develops, we’ll need to take a closer look at the details of how differently the body metabolizes natural and refined carbohydrates.

Let’s examine in details what happens when someone consumes a natural food in it’s natural form. We’ll have our mythological test subject Susan take a bite of a peach and watch step by step how the body handles the metabolism of the natural sugar the peach contains.

Susan takes a bite and swallows some of the peach. Within a few short minutes the body detects that what she’s consumed contains some form of sugar. The pancreas is then signaled to produce more insulin to help control the surge of sugar about to enter the bloodstream.

The body knows that the level of sugar in the blood must be tightly controlled. If the level were to get out of control and rise too high, tissues all over the body could be permanently damaged.

Fingers and toes could become permanently numb. Tiny blood vessels in the eyes could be damaged resulting in partial or complete blindness. Damage to the kidneys could result in kidney failure which would require kidney dialysis. And the arteries that feed blood to the heart could become blocked which could lead to a heart attack.

So the body responds by having the pancreas temporarily boost it’s output of insulin in order to keep the blood sugar level within a safe and healthy range.

Initially Susan’s blood sugar rises very slowly. When the increased insulin hits the blood stream it circulates throughout the body where it opens a metabolic gateway in the muscle and fat cells which allows the sugar in the blood stream to pass from the blood into the cells where it’s burned as fuel to produce energy.

As the excess sugar leaves the blood, the blood sugar level slowly declines back down to it’s normal level. This entire up-down cycle usually takes around two hours to complete.

The most important points to remember are these:

1. The blood sugar level increased very slowly.

2. The blood sugar level didn’t climb too high.

3. The pancreas was easily able to create the insulin required.

4. The insulin and blood sugar levels quickly returned to normal.

This cycle as presented above is the normal metabolic cycle as nature intended. Next we’ll take a look at a far different process. We’ll examine what happens when Susan consumes a refined carbohydrate.

Susan Drinks a Sugary Soft Drink

This time Susan takes a drink of a popular sugared soft drink. When the sugar the soft drink contains hits her system, the pancreas is once again signaled to increase it’s insulin output. But this time around the nature of the signal is very different.

This time the rise in blood sugar is much faster and greater than it was with the peach, so her blood sugar climbs toward a higher peak at a much faster rate.

Because the blood sugar level is increasing so rapidly, the signal the pancreas receives is more of a panic alarm than a routine request. In response the pancreas goes into emergency mode and begins pumping out all the insulin it possibly can. Think of this as something like an emergency 10-alarm fire alarm that goes out only when a major fire occurs. The response from the firemen in such a case is an all-out effort.

The carbohydrate in the soft drink is far more concentrated than any sugar found in nature. Because of the refined sugar’s much more concentrated nature, Susan’s blood sugar rapidly soars to a much higher peak than was the case with the peach.

After the blood stream has been flooded with an abnormally high level of insulin for an hour or so, the blood sugar level finally begins to tumble. But now, with the level of insulin in the blood so high, it drives the sugar level down to an abnormally low level.

This overshoot occurs because the pancreas was in emergency mode going flat out and as a result was unable to reduce it’s insulin production quickly enough to keep the blood sugar level from falling too far.

The result is an abnormally low blood sugar, a condition medical researchers call hypoglycemia (hypo = below normal, glycemia = sugar). If you feel weak, trembly, mentally fatigued and sleepy one to two hours after consuming a carbohydrate rich meal, you may be experiencing hypoglycemia. As you’ll see later, hypoglycemia should be avoided as it can damage sensitive brain wiring.