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Diet 101 - part 2

© Gerald Eisman

In the battle of the human bulge, low carbohydrate diets are coming into their own. True, this type of diet flies in the face of conventional or orthodox medical wisdom, but there is a growing school of "experts" who are taking a much closer look at the low carb way of life.

Obesity is almost always caused by some metabolic malfunction, and very rarely by gluttony (overeating). When your blood-sugar level rises, which it does after eating a high carbohydrate meal (an almost immediate occurrence), your system makes a decision as to how much of that carbohydrate (sugar) will be turned into energy for immediate use, and how much will be stored, as fat. The instrument used by the body is insulin, since insulin governs the conversion of blood-sugar.

When the sugar level in your blood rises, the pancreas creates insulin in a group of cells called the islets of Langerhans and secretes it into the blood stream. The insulin converts a portion of the sugar to glycogen which is stored in the muscles and liver to be released for immediate energy when needed. If all the storage areas are surfeited with glycogen, the excess is converted to a fatty tissue called a triglyceride, one of the main ingredients of adipose tissue (fat).

It is this chemical reaction that lies behind obesity and eventually, diabetes. When a person eats an excess of simple carbohydrate foodstuffs (sugar, honey, milk, fruit), or refined carbs such as potato starch, flour and white rice, an excess of insulin is produced and rushed into the blood to convert the carbs to glycogen. With all storage areas full, the excess is converted, as noted, to triglycerides. The cycle is self perpetuating.

To make matters more complicated, the more overweight a person grows, the more insulin resistant his/her body becomes, a fact disclosed by numerous studies. Eating excessive amounts of carbohydrates triggers the release of increasing amounts of insulin which, in turn, magnifies the problem of resistance by the body, resulting in inefficient utilization of insulin. The response by the body to this improper use of the hormone is to produce and release even more insulin.

The low carbohydrate diet can be expected to counteract the cycle and bring the body's response back to normal. The fewer carbs, the less need for insulin. Since protein and fat require very little to no excess insulin to be converted, conventional wisdom may be revoked with little or no adverse consequences and diets formulated based on the above facts should be effective in normalizing insulin levels. At the same time, since there are fewer carbs to be converted, the body can then draw on it's glycogen reserves to produce energy. With the glycogen reserves at short supply, the body will then utilize its stored fats, converting them to glycogen, thus slowly reducing weight.

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