Why Are You Eating Carbohydrates?
So you have a problem. It’s caused by eating too many carbohydrates.
Carbohydrates become glucose. Elevated glucose.
Would it make any sense at all to JUST STOP EATING THAT?
Deception By Omission
Have you ever seen a diabetes website tell you to not eat carbohydrates?
Neither have we. We alway thought that was because you had to eat carbohydrates. You must, right?
Actually, you don’t. And with a disease defined as excess blood glucose, that seems like a pretty important piece of the puzzle.
Yet, every website that we visited was failing to mention that very important biological fact.
Let’s quickly review what diabetes is one more time.
Here is the summary of what Medline+ says about diabetes.
Diabetes is a disease in which your blood glucose, or blood sugar, levels are too high. Glucose comes from the foods you eat. (Emphasis added).
With type 2 diabetes your body does not make or use insulin well. Not using insulin well usually means ‘insulin resistance’, which is when cells in your body won’t allow insulin to move glucose into the cells.
To summarize what diabetes websites all say:
- Diabetes is elevated blood glucose
- That blood glucose comes from the food you eat.
- Insulin is a hormone involved in getting glucose into your cells.
- At some point, your body either does not produce enough insulin, or your body cannot use insulin well.
- This results in the glucose building up in your bloodstream.
- Once it reaches a certain level, you are diagnosed as having Type 2 diabetes.
Why are you eating glucose?
On the surface it seems like you just have to. Aren’t carbohydrates just part of your daily food requirement? The government recommends that 50-60% of your daily calories should come from carbohydrates.
Aren’t we continually told that carbohydrates are essential for our brains, and that they are the body’s primary source of energy.
Don’t all of those carbohydrate foods contain vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients that we need for optimal health?
All of those things are stated so often in everything that we read and hear, that we just take them for granted. We just assume that we have to have carbohydrates in our diets
But we don’t.
Here is the truth of the matter:
The requirement for dietary carbohydrates in humans is ZERO. Not one gram EVER.
If you woke up tomorrow and could never eat another carbohydrate, do you know what would happen to you? Nothing.
Don’t get me wrong, you DO need carbohydrates to survive. You just don’t need them from your diet. Your body is fully capable of making all of the carbohydrate it needs all by itself.
To keep it simple, we’ll call that your ‘glucose system’. That system is very tightly controlled and finely tuned, continuously in real time.
There is only a SINGLE teaspoon of blood sugar – glucose, in your ENTIRE body. That’s it.
Your body does not require, or desire, ANY input from you at all. Literally none. There is absolutely no need for you to add any glucose to that system.
In fact, when you do eat glucose, it completely disrupts what was a smoothly operating system. Your body now has to spring into action to get that glucose OUT of your system as quickly as it can so it does not do you harm.
Why? Because excess glucose is toxic. It causes a myriad of metabolic problems. It can even cause death, as any Type 1 diabetic knows full well.
Diabetes is elevated blood glucose.
You get it from the food you eat.
The requirement for you to eat glucose is ZERO.
Not one gram ever.
Why are you eating glucose?
We live in a world that is awash in carbohydrate foods. We are told to eat them as our primary food source. We do that continuously day in and day out, year after year.
We are told that our body has something wrong. That it can’t produce enough insulin, or that it is not able to use it well.
That is not the case. Humans have been living quite well for hundreds of thousands of years without diabetes. Suddenly it’s everywhere.
Excess glucose is toxic to humans. That’s why your body so tightly controls the very, very, small amount that you have in your blood.
Diabetes is the result of you continually adding glucose that your body does not want.
Diabetes is not a disease. It’s a poisoning.
Everyone is telling you to eat the poison. And you are.
Is it any surprise that things are going horribly wrong. They are and you need to learn why.
The Essential Nutrients
There are three macronutrients. They are carbohydrate, fat, and protein. Of those three, two are essential, which means they are required to be consumed from outside sources. Those are referred to as essential fatty acids and essential amino acids.
The one that is not essential is carbohydrates. The reason is that the body is capable of creating the carbohydrates that person needs internally.
That’s why it is not considered ‘essential’.
Yes, your body does need a certain amount of carbohydrates to survive, but again, that can be produced by your own body. It does not have to come from eating anything.
This is often very surprising to most people given that we are constantly being told to consume most of our daily calories in the form of carbohydrates.
So clearly you must have to eat some! The food pyramid says you should, but no, actually you don’t.
It may be a shock for you to learn that the amount of carbohydrate that you need to consume on a daily basis is ZERO. Literally none.
In fact, if you woke up tomorrow and could not find one single gram of carbohydrate to eat, do you know what would happen to you?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Not tomorrow, not next week, or next year. Ever.
You won’t die and you won’t be sick There are no carbohydrate deficiency diseases. But carbohydrate excess is filling the hospitals.
What would happen is that you would no longer be fat.
You’d also find yourself cured of a long list of problems associated with eating carbohydrates. That list is long indeed.
More on that later.
How is that possible?
When I use the term carbohydrate, what I’m ultimately referring to is glucose. Almost all of the carbohydrates you eat and drink are broken down into glucose.
But remember, your body has its own system for creating and managing the glucose that it needs.
I’ll call it a ‘closed’ system. It is perfectly capable of deciding how much glucose to produce and where it is going to go.
There is actually a very small amount of this in your body.
Four grams of glucose circulates in the blood of a person weighing 70 kg. This glucose is critical for normal function in many cell types. In accordance with the importance of these 4 g of glucose, a sophisticated control system is in place to maintain blood glucose constant. Our focus has been on the mechanisms by which the flux of glucose from liver to blood and from blood to skeletal muscle is regulated. The body has a remarkable capacity to satisfy the nutritional need for glucose, while still maintaining blood glucose homeostasis.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2636990/
Your glucose management system is very tightly regulated. It requires absolutely no input from you at all.
All you have to do is just leave it alone. And that is exactly what it wants you to do.
The problem is that we don’t leave it alone.
Are carbohydrates the body’s preferred source of energy?
Do a search for what is the preferred energy source for humans and invariably you come up with carbohydrates.
But is that true?