Comparing the roles of food and medicine in achieving and maintaining health is easy. Food provides nutrients that help maintain health and prevent disease. In contrast, medicine acts to relieve the symptoms of illness and to help sick people regain health.

Thus, food provides nutrients that are the building blocks for health and medicine as a repair that helps to overcome the cause of the illness.

Eating a meal causes the release of many hormones, such as insulin, and other chemicals that influence how cells communicate to produce proteins that impact energy storage and use.

Understanding the complex pathways associated with hormones is a multibillion dollar effort by drug companies. Emerging evidence, however, shows that some of these pathways - particularly those involved in regulating insulin levels after eating - normally are regulated by certain foods, namely carbohydrates.

Insulin regulates the uptake, storage and use of many nutrients, including sugar or glucose and fat after a meal. The composition of a meal, particularly the type of carbohydrate, affects glucose levels in the blood, which influences insulin concentration.

Complex carbohydrates, such as whole grains, delay the increase in blood sugar, but simple carbohydrates, such as table sugar or soda, causes a rapid spike in blood glucose.

Diets may be classified based on their effects on insulin response after eating a meal. High-insulin-response diets elevate insulin levels for prolonged periods of time (four to six hours) after eating. In contrast, low-insulin response meals yield a much lower insulin level that is maintained for long periods of time. High insulin levels are thought to promote obesity by increasing fat storage and decreasing fat use to meet energy needs.

Perhaps not surprisingly, fat tissue below the skin in the abdomen produces unique chemical signals that decrease the effectiveness of insulin in regulating sugar and fat use. Thus, fat or adipose tissue is a target to evaluate the effects of diet on development of obesity and type 2 diabetes.

A recent study provides valuable insight as to how fat cells respond to these types of diets. Overweight and obese women and men with various clinical signs characteristic of pre-diabetes (elevated fasting insulin levels, increased waist circumferences, high blood pressure and increases in certain types of lipids in the blood) consumed diets with either a high- or low-insulin response for three months. Low-insulin response would be from eating bread and pasta made from unprocessed cereal, grains and pasta, and high-insulin response would be from eating bread made from processed oat-wheat-potato flour, bread and potatoes.

The diets had the same amounts of fiber, fat, carbohydrate and protein. As expected, consumption of the low- compared with the high-insulin response diet resulted in important reductions in fasting insulin and glucose after a standardized, high-glucose test meal. This effect, however, occurred without a decrease in body weight, which is the expected change associated with decreases in blood insulin and glucose.

Analysis of small pieces of fat obtained from under the skin at the front of the abdomen revealed some very important changes within these cells. The size of the fat cells decreased with the low- but not the high-insulin response diet. In the fat cells, certain genes that manage the production of proteins that control specific functions were impacted. The low-insulin response diet turned off many genes, specifically those that regulate how insulin affects carbohydrate and fat storage, and regular replacement of cells.

Two other findings are critical. The low-insulin response diet decreased the activity of an enzyme, hormone-sensitive lipase, which controls release of fats stored in fat cells. People with reduced activity of this enzyme have lower levels of glucose, insulin and fats in the blood. Thus, it is thought that the decreased activity of this enzyme probably accounts for some of the benefits of diets designed to lower insulin secretion.

The low-insulin response diet also reduced the presence of another gene, one which is known to be a strong predictor of development of type 2 diabetes. In contrast, the high-insulin response diet increased the activity of other genes related to stress and inflammation - processes related to adverse effects of obesity, including type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

The general application of these findings for each of us is simple. We should eat more fruits, vegetables and legumes (dry peas, beans and peanuts), choose whole-grains or products that are minimally processed, such as pasta and old-fashioned oatmeal and cereals, and limit intake of products high in concentrated sugar. These recommendations have the benefit of replacing high calories with high nutrient (vitamin, mineral and fiber) content foods.

Bookmark and Share

• 0 Comments

Structural integrity, flexibility and permeability of cell membrane are crucial for any organism and diabetes is primarily a result of an improper cell membrane structure. This may surprise the mainstream which is obsessed with insulin based theories such as pancreas not producing enough insulin to meet body’s needs. Real problem in Type 2 diabetes is not lack of insulin but in most instances an excess of insulin which is ineffective against hardened cell membrane. When insulin knocks at the cellular door, a series of chemical reactions activate glucose transporters and for simplicity, let us discuss GLUT 4, which travel from inside of the cell towards membrane to facilitate glucose entry into the cell. The pathway all along is heavily a fat based construction on which these transporters go through.

It may be surprising to the fat haters who blame everything on fats, but in reality our cellular membrane structures are heavily dependent on fats as the structural element. If these are Omega 3 fatty acids, the cell membrane structure is supple and flexible enough for easy entry of not only sugar but other necessary molecules. If the body does not get sufficient amounts of these Omega 3 fatty acids, it substitutes whatever fats it is supplied with. These may be trans fats, hydrogenated oils, short and medium chain fatty acids. All these pose problems for proper entry of sugar and insulin becomes less effective as the GLUT 4 will have difficult passage to go through the stiffened membranes of wrong fats. Trace element Chromium helps to a certain extent to ease this condition, but it can only go so far under wrong structural integrity to begin with which is the main problem of diabetes.

This requires a paradigm shift in thinking on how to address the fundamental issue in diabetes which is the improper cell membrane. Diabetes is the result of food industry’s profit oriented thinking of long shelf life with wrong fats such as trans fats, hydrogenated, partially hydrogenated, short and medium chain fatty acids at the expense of long term health consequences of the population. This is only the partial story, as there is the other main culprit which is an extensive and indiscriminate use and promotion of refined sugars based products all over the super market shelves beyond what is a reasonable limit if any.

More later in the coming days…

Bookmark and Share

• 0 Comments

John Beard, a Scottish biologist in the early 1900s theorized a Trophoblast Cell theory of cancer based on his observations. As per his observations, several stem cell like cells are left over in our bodies as a repair and rebuild mechanism. These get into action as an initial patch up material when the body is under attack of any sorts such as environmental pollutants, pathogens or improper life style factors.  There are two pancreatic enzymes called Trypsin and it’s precursor Chymotrypsin which if present in sufficient quantities, can help digest these trophoblast cells and the body’s other repair mechanisms will deal with the rest of the repairs needed.  When the pancreas loses it’s ability to produce Trypsin and Chymotrypsin in sufficient quantities, the trophoblast cells go unchecked and form cancerous tumors. John Beard carried several experiments with pancreatic juices of animals and confirmed his findings but these experiments could not be repeated successfully by others due to sensitive nature of these enzymes and not following the same procedures as he did.

Let us leave the controversy to let it take it’s own course, but one can always benefit enormously by strengthening the functioning of the pancreas as it is often an overlooked, overburdened and excessively misused organ of the body. It is involved in enzymes production and insulin production which play very important roles in our health. First one can take the stress off on the pancreas a bit by going easy on the sugars, refined carbohydrates and eating a balanced diet rich with nutrients. Second one can help the pancreas by consuming enzyme rich food such as sprouts so that it can use those precious enzymes in addressing important issues such as digesting trophoblast cells there by arresting  cancer before it becomes an out of control issue. A good quality systemic enzyme supplement such as Wobenzyme and other digestive enzyme supplements may be considered to give the pancreas a bit of help. Pancreas has high concentrations of Coenzyme Q10. A good quality Coenzyme Q10 and Vitamin C along with heavy metal chelators such as IP6 will go a long way in renewing and jump starting the health and well being of the pancreas so that it can take care of body’s vital needs.

We will examine these issues in detail again in future posts when related topics of interest arise.

Bookmark and Share

• 1 Comment

Some of the real causes of the heart disease are

• Inflammation
• Problems with Nitric Oxide Production
  
• Lack of Collagen Integrity
• Inadequate Methylation and High Homocysteine Levels
• Oxidative Damage
• High Sugar Diet
• Insulin Resistance
• Improper Digestion
• Poor Liver Function
• Imbalanced Omega 6 to Omega 3 Ratio
• Trans Fats and Hydrogenated Oils

It may be surprising to see that cholesterol may not even figure in one of them. Total obsession and unwarranted fixation on cholesterol as the main cause of the heart disease for several decades side tracked the whole set of issues that need more attention to build a healthy life style for the humanity. Cholesterol is a life sustaining substance, forms part of the cellular membrane, is the basic raw material for all the hormones, is used for repair and rebuilding and Vitamin D is made from it. Almost 80% of the cholesterol is manufactured by the liver, so one can see the importance of it. While cholesterol in itself may not be a culprit, an oxidized cholesterol can initiate the damage, but oxidative injury is not just limited to cholesterol alone, but to all components of the body.

Cholesterol is C₂₇H₄₅OH with a hydroxyl group, four hydrocarbon rings and a hydrocarbon tail. Cholesterol is an alcohol because of its hydroxyl group (Ethanol is C₂H₅OH) and is a steroid because of its four ring structure making it a sterol in the end. Cholesterol is a fat like waxy substance to which liver mixes lipoproteins called VLDL (very low-density lipoproteins) and high-density lipoproteins (HDL) to make it mix in blood for circulation. VLDL becomes LDL in the bloodstream. In addition to producing cholesterol, liver also clears cholesterol through receptors and this clearing can get into issues if the liver is congested when regular flushing is not happening properly. Liver also participates in a feedback loop to adjust its production of cholesterol if there is excess dietary cholesterol coming in. As per the flawed theory of heart disease, cholesterol combines with cellular waste products, calcium, fibrin etc. and deposits itself on the surface of the artery walls there by constricting them and an increase in cholesterol can pose bigger threat. This theory fails to explain why there are no extensive blockages all over the body if there is an excess of cholesterol.

A sensible analysis of the problem of why heart disease occurs in the first place does not have much of a role for cholesterol. Arteries near the heart are mechanically strained every second by contracting and expanding and have high amounts of muscle tissues to meet this mechanical stress, which is not the case with rest of the veins in the body. A lot of things can go wrong with arteries making them injured and inflammed. Body uses cholesterol to patch the injury sites as a means to save our lives without which we would be bled to death internally without even knowing it. Cholesterol in fact is a savior of sorts. A hight cholesterol itself is not the issue here. The injury process of the arterial wall is the main issue in heart disease and not the high cholesterol by itself. There are no short cuts to fixing heart disease by just taking cholesterol lowering pills. Though statins may be useful because of their anti inflammatory component to a certain extent but not because of their cholesterol lowering effect, there are several other much safer ways to achieve anti inflammatory benefits. Unless arterial wall injury process is addressed in a comprehensive fashion by taking several healthy steps as outlined in the beginning of this post, true relief from heart disease cannot be obtained.

Rest of the posts in this series will take a comprehensive look at addressing the real causes of heart disease as outlined at the beginning of this post.

Bookmark and Share

• 0 Comments