Saturday, March 27, 2021

Fructose and Triglycerides

 When I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in 1996, it was thought that although fructose, which is half of sucrose (table sugar; the other half is glucose), didn't raise blood glucose (BG) as much as glucose, it could have an effect on triglycerides (fats).

One source said that although fructose didn't affect blood triglycerides in people with unimpaired glucose tolerance, it could raise them in people with defects in carbohydrate metabolism (e.g., people with diabetes) even at relatively low levels of fructose intake.

Yet despite this, products sweetened with fructose were sold as diabetes friendly. We have to remember that factors other than BG levels are important for health, so higher triglycerides are not benign.

A recent study shows that consumption of fructose or sucrose, but not glucose, doubles the synthesis of triglycerides in the liver. The full text can be found here. Note that this study was done on "healthy lean men." Results might be even more pronounced in those with diabetes.

Increased fat production in the liver is a significant first step in the development of common diseases such as fatty liver and type-2 diabetes, so this is important.

Some people say that diabetes isn't caused by eating sugar. Are they wrong?



Wednesday, March 3, 2021

Asian Glycemic Index

Many people no longer use the glycemic index or the related glycemic load, which rate carbohydrate foods by how quickly they raise blood glucose levels, because they focus on reducing the consumption of carbohydrate foods regardless of their glycemic index. But some people still do use this index.

And now there's a list of Asian foods with glycemic indexes. There's still no African index. But the Asian index should be useful for people who eat a lot of such foods and wonder about their effect on blood glucose levels without testing for themselves.

Long ago, when I gave up regular noodles and didn't yet know about shirataki noodles, I discovered I could eat small amounts of cellophane noodles, also known as glass noodles or bean thread or mung bean noodles (the ones not containing other starches), without a big effect on my blood glucose levels. They're included in this Asian list and have a glycemic index of 28, which is relatively low.

So my self-testing was correct.