Dr. Michael Eades on the Paleolithic diet

18. February 2009 William Davis (16)
Dr. Michael Eades has posted an absolutely spectacular commentary on the Paleolithic diet concept:

Rapid health improvements with a Paleolithic diet

The post was prompted by publication of a study that tried to recreate a Paleolithic-like diet experience over a brief study period:

Metabolic and physiologic improvements from consuming a paleolithic, hunter-gatherer type diet.

Dr. Eades discussion is wonderfully insightful and comprehensive and there's little to say to improve on his discussion.

I'd make one small point: From what I see in my experience, the improvements in lipid patterns seen in the brief period of this study are very likely to have been primarily due to the removal of wheat. Followers of this blog know that wheat elimination is among the most powerful cholesterol-reducing strategies available.

What vitamin D form?

15. February 2009 William Davis (36)
In response to questions regarding why don't vitamin D tablets work, here are my observations.

When I first started correcting vitamin D levels around 3 1/2 years ago, people would begin with starting 25-hydroxy vitamin D blood levels of around 20 ng/ml.

Taking, say, 6000 units vitamin D as tablets over 3 months yielded blood levels of 24-30 ng/ml. Taking 6000 units in an oil-based form, and blood levels would commonly be 60-70 ng/ml.

In other words, tablets are very poorly absorbed. I also saw very erratic absorption with tablets, with tremendous variation in blood levels.

I witnessed this effect many times. I finally began telling patients to avoid the tablets altogether. It's simply not worth it. Taking dose X of tablets, you cannot predict what the blood level of vitamin D will be.

Now, you can sometimes make the tablets get absorbed by either taking with a teaspoon of oil (e.g., olive, flaxseed) or taking with an oil-rich meal. However, I am uncertain just how consistent the absorption is under these circumstances, not having done this enough times to know.

Oil-filled gelcaps are no more expensive than tablets (or perhaps a dollar more). Health food store employees and pharmacists don't know this. I have had many patients come to the office claiming they changed to tablets because that's all their health food store or pharmacy carried and the person behind the counter assured them it was the same. Blood level of vitamin D to confirm: right back down to the starting level or near it--little or no absorption.

The only way to know whether a preparation is absorbed is to check a blood level. But, in my experience, having checked vitamin D blood levels thousands of times, gelcaps never fail; tablets fail over 80% of the time.

Vitamin D for the pharmaceutically challenged

14. February 2009 William Davis (20)
Most Heart Scan Blog readers already know:

Your doctor has been brainwashed by the pharmaceutical industry.

Your doctor more than likely has spent the better part of his or her career in the Guantanamo Bay of healthcare, water-boarded by seductive sales representatives, enticed with promises of fame and riches, threatened with ostracism from the clubby internal halls of healthcare if--gasp!--he or she didn't subscribe to the "rule" that only drugs are good, anything else is bad.

The same FDA-approval-is-necessary-to-be-good brand of nonsense is gaining popularity among my colleagues who, having caught some mention (on the Today Show, Oprah, or similar source of medical information), hope to join the vitamin D hoopla.

People will proudly declare that they are taking a high dose of vitamin D: 50,000 units once per week.

No. They are taking a barely useful form: D2, ergocalciferol.

Studies examining the reliability of the D2 form differ:

There's the Heaney study suggesting that D2 is less effective than D3:
Vitamin D2 is much less effective than vitamin D3 in humans

Then there's the Holick study showing they are equivalent:
Vitamin D2 is as effective as vitamin D3 in maintaining circulating concentrations of 25-hydroxyvitamin D.

My experience is more in line with the Heaney study: Little or no real effect with D2.

One particularly illustrative case I witnessed was a woman who was mistakenly prescribed D2 at 50,000 units per day. She told me that she'd been taking it for a year. I fully expected to see clear-cut signs of toxicity (e.g., high blood calcium levels). Curiously, she showed no signs of toxicity. Nor did she show any vitamin D at all in her blood: 25-hydroxy D level of zero--literally zero.

I've witnessed similar phenomena several times: plenty of vitamin D2 . . . very little vitamin D in the blood.

All in all, I suppose that D2 is better than No-D at all. But you are far better off joining the ranks of the pharmaceutically challenged and go with the stuff that really works: D3.

D3, or cholecalciferol, yields confident increases in blood levels. It is inexpensive, safe, and an exact copy of the human form of vitamin D. (Of course, gelcap or drops only, NEVER tablets.)

There is absolute NO reason to take vitamin D2, the form that sometimes works, sometimes doesn't, the facsimile plant form issued by the drug industry.

Why don't stents prevent heart attack?

12. February 2009 William Davis (11)


No study has ever documented that stents prevent future heart attack. But, in day-to-day practice, stents are frequently implanted for just this reason.

A little clarification. Stents do prevent heart attack--if the heart attack is already underway, either as an "acute myocardial infarction" or "unstable angina."

In other words, a plaque in a coronary artery can rupture just like a little volcano. Rather than spewing lava, the underlying plaque contents--fibrous tissue, inflammatory cells, cholesterol crystals, fatty material, debris--are exposed to flowing blood and trigger spasm of the artery and blood clot formation. A ruptured plaque is typically found in people who go to the emergency room with severe chest pain or have difficulty breathing.

A heart catheterization is performed, a severe (e.g., 90-100%--completely closed) is found. A stent in this situation is of clear-cut benefit.

What is not clearly beneficial is someone with no symptoms, symptoms only with physical activity that has been present for at least several months, or someone with a high heart scan score and no symptoms. In these circumstances, stent implantation does not reduce risk for future heart attack.

Why?



Take a look at this angiogram of a right coronary artery. You can seen plaque all along the artery (represented by areas that appear pinched off. There are at least 4 visible.)

Putting one 15 millimeter stent in the artery will only affect the area of artery stented. (Stents vary in length, but typically are 12-18 millimeters in length.) The right coronary artery is about 10 times or more this length. There are also two other arteries of similar length. A stent at one location will do nothing to affect the potential for rupture in any of the other plaque-laden areas.

Say a stent is implanted in the "worst" blockage in this right coronary artery, the plaque located at around 9 o'clock. What about all the other plaques? They can still rupture.

Why not put in many stents, say, 4 or 5, and stent all the visible plaques?

Two reasons: 1) Plaque you can't even see on an angiogram can still rupture, and 2) it is very costly (easily $30,000 at the very least), 3) incurs greater procedural risk, and 4) messes up the artery for future procedures, since a steel-lined artery that develops more disease in future will be more difficult to re-implant stents, bypass, or perform other procedural manipulations.

The point: Putting in stents does not reduce potential for plaque rupture in the entire artery.

What can prevent plaque rupture? That's the whole point of following an effective prevention program: prevent plaque rupture.

(Of course, this discussion cannot encompass the wide variety of potential situations that may cause your doctor to individualize your approach. Nonetheless, when advised to have an elective heart procedure, a healthy dose of skepticism and is clearly a good practice.)

Top image courtesy National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

Low thyroid: What to do?

8. February 2009 William Davis (25)
I've gotten a number of requests for solutions on how to solve the low thyroid issue if either 1) your doctor refuses to discuss the issue or denies it is present, or 2) there are government mandates against thyroid correction unless certain (outdated) targets are met.

Oh, boy.

While I'm not encouraging anyone to break the laws or regulations of their country (and it's impossible to generalize, with readers of this blog originating from over 30 countries), here are some simple steps to consider that might help you in your quest to correct hypothyroidism:

--Measure your body temperature--First thing in the morning either while lying in bed or go to the bathroom and measure your oral temp. Record it and, if it is consistently lower than 97.0 degrees (Fahrenheit), show it to your doctor. This may help persuade him/her.(You can still be hypothyroid with higher temperatures, but if low temperatures are present, it is simply more persuasive evidence in favor of treatment).

--Supplement with iodine 150 mcg per day to be sure you are not iodine deficient. This is becoming more common in the U.S. as people avoid iodized salt. It is quite common outside the U.S. An easy, inexpensive preparation is kelp tablets.

--Show your doctor a recent crucial study: The HUNT Study that suggests that cardiovascular mortality begins to increase at a TSH of only 1.5 or greater, not the 5.5 mIU usually used by laboratories and doctors.

--Ask people around you whether they are aware of a health practitioner who might be willing to work with you, or at least have an open mind (sadly, an uncommon commodity).

Also, see thyroid advocate and prolific author, Mary Shomon's advice on how to find a doctor willing to work with you. Yes, they are out there, but you may have to ask a lot of friends and acquaintances, or meet and fire a lot of docs. It shouldn't be this way, but it is. It will change through public pressure and education, but not by next week.

Another helpful discussion from Mary Shomon: The TSH Normal Range: Why is there still controversy? You will read that even the endocrinologists (a peculiarly contentious group) seethingly debate what constitutes normal vs. low thyroid function.

Also, you might remind a resistant health practitioner that guidelines are guidelines--they are not laws that restrain anyone. They are simply meant to represent broad population guidelines that do not take your personal health situation into consideration.

Which statin drug is best?

8. February 2009 William Davis (7)
I re-post a Heart Scan Blog post from one year ago, answering the question: Which statin drug is best?

I still get this question from patients in the office and online, nearly always prompted by a TV commercial. So let me re-express my thoughts from a year ago, which have not changed on this issue.


The statin drugs can indeed play a role in a program of coronary plaque control and regression.

However, thanks to the overwhelming marketing (and lobbying and legislative) clout of the drug manufacturing industry, they play an undeserved, oversized role. I get reminded of this whenever I'm pressed to answer the question: "Which statin drug is best?"

In trying to answer this question, we encounter several difficulties:

1) The data nearly all use statins drugs by themselves, as so-called monotherapy. Other than the standard diet--you know, the American Heart Association diet, the one that causes heart disease--it is a statin drug alone that has been studied in the dozens of major trials "validating" statin drug use. The repeated failure of statin drugs to eliminate heart disease and associated events like heart attack keeps being answered by the "lower is better" argument, i.e., if 70% of heart attacks destined to occur still take place, then reduce LDL even further. This is an absurd argument that inevitably encounters a wall of limited effects.

2) The great bulk of clinical data examining both the incidence of cardiovascular events as well as plaque progression or regression have all been sponsored by the drug's manufacturer. It has been well-documnted that, when a drug manufacturer sponsors a trial, the outcome is highly likely to be in favor of that drug. Imagine Ford sponsors a $30 million study to prove that their cars are more reliable and safer. What is the likelihood that the outcome will be in favor of the competition? Very unlikely. Such is human nature.

If we were to accept the clinical trial data at face value and ignore the above issues, then I would come to the conclusion that we should be using Crestor at a dose of 40 mg per day, since that was the regimen used in the ASTEROID Trial that achieved modest reversal of coronary atherosclerotic plaque by intravascular ultrasound.

But I do not advocate such an ASTEROID-like approach for several reasons:

1) In my experience, nobody can tolerate 40 mg of Crestor for more than few weeks, a few months at most. Show me someone who can survive and tolerate Crestor 40 mg per day and I'll show you somebody who survived a 40 foot fall off his roof--sure, it happens, but it's a fluke.

2) The notion that only one drug is necessary to regress this disease is, in my view, absurd. It ignores issues like hypertension, metabolic syndrome, inflammatory phenomena, lipoprotein(a), post-prandial (after-eating) phenomena, LDL particle size, triglycerides, etc. You mean that Crestor 40 mg per day, or other high-intensity statin monotherapy should be enough to overcome all of these patterns and provide maximal potential for coronary plaque reversal? No way.

3) Plaque reversal can occur without a statin agent. While statin drugs may provide some advantage in the reduction of LDL, much of the benefit ends there. All of the other dozens of causes of coronary atherosclerotic plaque need to be addressed.

So which statin is best? This question is evidence of the brainwashing that has seized the public and my colleagues. The question is not which statin is best. The question should be: What steps do I take to maximize my chances of reversing coronary atherosclerotic plaque?

The answer may or may not involve a statin drug, regardless of the subtle differences among them.

Dr. Nancy Sniderman, heart scans on Today Show

5. February 2009 William Davis (6)
While shaving this morning, I caught the report by NBC medical expert, Dr. Nancy Sniderman, about her coronary plaque and CT coronary angiogram.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy




Those of you in the Track Your Plaque program or who follow The Heart Scan Blog know that we should tell Dr. Sniderman and her doctor that:

She has done virtually nothing that will stop an increasing heart scan score! In fact, Dr. Sniderman is now following the "prevention program" that is eerily reminiscent of Tim Russert's program! We all know how that turned out.

It is pure folly to believe that a combination of Lipitor, exercise, and a "healthy diet" (usually meaning a low-fat diet--yes, the diet that promotes heart disease) will stop the otherwise relentless increase in heart scan score.

Dr. Sniderman, please consider:

1) Having the real causes of your coronary plaque identified. (It is highly unlikely to be just LDL cholesterol, though the drug industry is thrilled that you believe this.)

2) Ask yourself (or, if your doctor knew what she was doing, ask her): Why do I have heart disease? LDL cholesterol is insufficient reason--virtually nobody I know has high LDL cholesterol as the sole cause. LDL cholesterol is, at most, one reason among many others, but is insufficient as a sole cause.

3) What is your vitamin D status? Crucial!

4) What is your thyroid status?

5) Fish oil--a must!

6) Do you have lipoprotein(a)? Small LDL?

Just addressing the items on the above checklist would put you on a far more confident path to stop your heart scan score from increasing.

If you were to repeat your heart scan score, my prediction: Your score will be higher by 18-24% per year.

My personal experience with low thyroid

3. February 2009 William Davis (31)
Something happened to me around October-November of last year.

I usually feel great. Ordinarily, my struggles are sleeping and relaxing. As with most people, I have too many projects on my schedule, though I find my activities stimulating and fascinating.

I blasted through a very demanding November, trying to meet the needs of a book publisher. This involved sleeping only a few hours a night for several days on end, all after a full day of office practice and hospital duties.

But it was getting tougher. My concentration was becoming more fragmented. Getting things done was proving an elusive goal. Exercise became a real chore.

Although I usually force myself to go to sleep, I was starting to fall asleep before my usual bedtime, and I was sleeping longer than usual.

It's been a tough winter in Wisconsin. Let's face it: It's Wisconsin. But it's been tough even for this region, with weeks of temperatures consistently below 10 degrees. Even so, I was having a heck of a time keeping warm. Extra shirts, socks, soaking my hands in hot water--none of it worked and I was freezing.

So I had my thyroid values checked:

Free T3: 2.6 pg/ml (Ref 2.3-4.2)
Free T4: 1.20 ng/dl (Ref 0.89-1.76)
TSH: 1.528 uUI/ml (Ref 0.350-5.500)

Normal by virtually all standards. I measured my first morning oral temperature: 96.1, 96.3, 95.9. Hmmmm.

My experience coincided with the Track Your Plaque and Heart Scan Blog conversations about low thyroid being enormously underappreciated, with the newest data on thyroid disease suggesting that a TSH for ideal health is probably 1.5 mIU or less. (More about that: Is normal TSH too high? and Thyroid perspective update .

Could this simply be a case of medical student-oma in which every beginning medical student believes he has every disease he learns about?

Despite the apparently "normal" thyroid blood tests, I took the leap and started taking Armour thyroid, beginning at 1/2 grain (30 mg), increasing to 1 grain (60 mg) after the first week.

Within 10 days, I experienced:

--Dramatic restoration of the ability to concentrate
--A boost in mood. (In fact, the last few blog posts before I replaced thyroid reflect my deepening crabbiness.)
--Large increase in energy, now restored to old levels
--Need for less sleep
--I'm warm again! (It's still <20 degrees, but I get easily stay warm while indoors.)

I am absolutely, positively convinced of the power of thyroid. I am further convinced from the clinical data, patient experiences, and now my own personal experience, that low levels of hypothyroidism are being dramatically underappreciated and underdiagnosed.

I shudder to think of what my life would have been like 6 months or a year from now without correction of thyroid hormone.

Now, the tough question: Why the heck is this happening to so many people?

Speaking availability

3. February 2009 William Davis (5)
Just a quick announcement:

If you would like to hear more about the concepts articulated in The Heart Scan Blog or in the Track Your Plaque program, I am available to speak to your group.

Among the possible topics:

Return to the Wild: Natural Nutritional Supplements That Supercharge Health
Why this apparent "need" for fish oil and other heart-healthy supplements? I discuss why some nutritional supplements make perfect sense when we are viewed in the context of primitive humans living modern lives, while other supplements do little.


Shrink Your Tummy . . .or, Why Your Dietitian is Fat!
Weight loss doesn't have to involve calorie counting, deprivation, or hunger pangs. But the conventional "rules" for weight loss and health have to be broken.

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Extraordinary Heart Health
Heart health is something that you can seize control over, something identifiable, correctable, and . . . reversible. Much of this can be achieved with little or no medication, nor procedures. I detail all the enormously empowering lessons learned through the Track Your Plaque program.


I can also present in-depth yet entertaining discussions on the power of vitamin D, natural cholesterol control, screening for heart disease, and similar topics covered in the blog.

To learn more, just e-mail us at contact@trackyourplaque, or call my office at 414-456-1123.

Learn how to eat from Survivorman

31. January 2009 William Davis (22)

Look no farther than Discovery Channel to learn how humans were meant to eat.

The Survivorman show documents the (self-filmed) 7-day adventures of Les Stroud, who is dropped into various remote corners of the world to survive on little but ingenuity and will to live. Starting without food or water, the Survivorman scrapes and scrambles in the wilderness for essentials to survive in habitats as far ranging as the Ecuadorian rainforest to sub-arctic Labrador.

What does Survivorman have to do with your nutrition habits?

Everything. The lessons we can learn by watching this TV show are plenty.

Survivorman plays out the life we are supposed to be living: slaughtering wild game with simple handmade tools and his bare hands, identifying plants and berries that are safe to eat, trapping fish, scavenging the kill of other predators. He's even resorted to eating bugs and caterpillars, particularly following several days of unsuccessful hunting and scavenging.

What is notable from the Survivorman experience is what is absent: In the steppe, desert, tundra, or jungle, you will not find bread, fruit drinks, or Cheerios. You won't find farm-fattened, corn-fed livestock with meat marbled with fat.

Imagine the result of such an experience for us, drawn out over 6 months. Even an obese, diabetic, gluttonous, XXX dress size 350-lb woman would return a lean 105 lbs, size 0, non-diabetic, fully able to run miles in the wild tracking game.

Survivorman's quiet desperation of living in the wild, preoccupied with worries over where his next meal might be found, is a stark contrast to the bloated, shelves stacked floor-to-ceiling supermarkets, and our modern society's all-you-can-eat several times per day lifestyle.

Am I advocating selling the car and house and chucking modern society for the "safety" of the jungles of Borneo?

No, of course not. I am advocating taking a lesson from the clever experiment conducted by Mr. Stroud, a return-to-the-wild experience that should teach us something about how perverse our modern nutritional lives have become.
Honey: More fructose than high-fructose corn syrup

Honey: More fructose than high-fructose corn syrup

11. August 2009 William Davis (21)
Honey: It’s natural. Mom probably gave it to you, either straight or in tea for a sore throat when you were a kid. Even today, honey is touted as possessing almost supernatural qualities for promoting health.

Honey contains B vitamins, minerals, and a handful of antioxidants. It also contains . . . fructose. 60% of honey, in fact, is fructose.

While the average per capita intake of honey is only a modest 1.29 lb per year (National Honey Board; 2008) and therefore contributes only 0.77 lb of fructose per year, there are people who, believing honey to be healthy, use it to excess and use far more than 1.29 lb per year.

How does that compare to table sugar, or sucrose?

Sucrose is 50:50 glucose to fructose. How about high-fructose corn syrup, the sweetener found in virtually all processed foods that has replaced sucrose as the most common sweetener? Depending on the variety, high-fructose corn syrup is generally 42-55% fructose. Many of us (including me) believe that the proliferation of high-fructose corn syrup in processed foods is a big part of the reason Americans are fat and diabetic.

Yes: Judged by its fructose content, honey is worse than high-fructose corn syrup. It is also worse than sucrose.

It means that honey can also contribute to the adverse health effects of fructose, as detailed in this prior Heart Scan Blog post.
Tags :

Comments (21) -

  • Nancy LC

    8/11/2009 5:40:02 PM |

    Is there any difference in fructose by source?  I know that natural fructose has a molecule that is  either right-handed or left-handed (can't remember which) and manufactured fructose is the opposite?  Could that account for a difference in how they're metabolized?

  • Kipper

    8/13/2009 4:52:23 AM |

    Regardless of what honey does once it's been absorbed, for those of us who don't digest fructose well it is frequently a quick ticket to intestinal distress (as is agave nectar).

  • jon

    8/13/2009 5:26:22 AM |

    As Dr. Royal Lee pointed out in the 1920's. Honey is a complete food, containing proteins, vitamins, minerals, coenzymes, and cofactors; as well as the fructose. Eat too much of it (or any whole food) and the body will avoid it for months to years.

    Processed foods have no such feedback mechanism.

  • Kismet

    8/13/2009 3:26:27 PM |

    Interesting references (I love honey), but what is the biological rationale for those findings? Some magical & so far unkown micronutrient in honey?

    Even if the latter is the case, eliminating fructose while adding this nutrient X would be even healthier (that is assuming the fructose literature shows a convincing dose-response relationship, I haven't checked).

  • jpatti

    8/16/2009 8:19:20 PM |

    Not for *me*, because I'm diabetic, but for most people I think there *is* an advantage to using honey, molasses, sorghum and/or maple syrup instead of granulated sugar.  

    It's not the minerals and vitamins, cause it's not enough to be significant.  If raw, there's some enzymes too, but again... really a salad and a cup of broth has way more micronutrients than any of these syrups.

    But these all taste way stronger than sugar.  It's really easy to oversweeten things with white sugar, because the only taste there is "sweet".  If you're sweetening with a strongly-flavored syrup, it's a lot harder to overdo.  

    It's easy for someone to put 2-3 tsp of sugar in a cup of coffee; much less likely for them to put in that dose of molasses.

    In short, for people who do not have blood glucose issues, using the syrups for sweetening still cuts sugar consumption down a lot, which is a good thing.  

    And for those of us with blood glucose issues, there's stevia.

  • Anonymous

    8/16/2009 8:26:17 PM |

    However, honey will have the natural form of fructose, the D isomer, which can be converted to glucose and go through the glycolytic pathway. The chemical process which produces HFCS makes a significant amount of L-fructose which can only be processed by immeditately turning it into fat. This may account for Jonathan's studies showing good things from a non-industrial source of fructose. I suspect the same things would be shown with fructose from fruits.

  • jacob

    8/18/2009 4:00:35 PM |

    Fascinating on honey (& possibly fruit). I've always been suspicious of equating HFCS, or purified lab fructose, with the fructose found in fruits and in honey. Do you have any references for the d isomer / l-fructose distinction?

    Thanks

  • Lucy

    8/19/2009 9:13:36 PM |

    Well this is definitely going to make me think twice before using spoon-fulls of honey in my next camomile tea, lol. This is useful information that was surprising to me, so thanks for sharing! I work with a program called Chef's Diet, and we create meals used from fresh produce and lean meats, delivered to your door daily.  I find your post pertinent. If you or your readers are interested in healthy eating and are interested in Chef's Diet, check us out at http://www.mychefsdiet.com.

  • Anonymous

    8/22/2009 6:02:27 PM |

    Jacob, this was my source for the L-fructose comment. Maybe not the most reliable source but an interesting premise. I have not gone to the original literature to verify.
    http://www.westonaprice.org/modernfood/HFCSAgave.pdf

  • David Gillespie

    8/24/2009 1:41:26 AM |

    According to the Finnish National institute of health and welfare, honey contains only 41.4% fructose.  Even allowing for half of the 1.5% sucrose being converted to fructose, its still short of the 50% fructose for table sugar or the 55% for HFCS.

    See http://www.fineli.fi/food.php?foodid=4&lang=en

  • Anonymous

    9/11/2009 12:48:33 PM |

    "jon said...
    As Dr. Royal Lee pointed out in the 1920's. Honey is a complete food, containing proteins...."

    Are you referring to Royal "Jel" Lee?

    Sorry. I could not resist.

  • rshwnd

    10/10/2009 3:26:57 PM |

    from what I've been reading...mass produced honey where bees are under forced conditions to produce honey are fed fructose corn syrup and this leads to higher levels of fructose in our honey.  fructose corn syrup is the ultimate culprit and is something I avoid. when shopping for honey, the cheaper honey will most likely be the honey that is "spiked" with fructose corn syrup.  it is also referred to as "baker's honey".  you need to buy whole organic honey to get honey that doesn't contain the corn syrup.  also, most food that has honey as an ingredient will contain fructose corn syrup.  I used to buy the "golden blossom" brand of honey but discovered that is is packed with high fructose corn syrup.  I only buy organic now...its a bit more money but worth every penny

  • Anonymous

    3/27/2010 7:23:00 PM |

    Ah, yes, the HFCS Big Lie: the artificial sweetener produced from agricultural starches. Despite its name, the fructose in HFCS is not the same as the L-fructose found in fruit and honey; instead it contains high concentrations of D-fructose, a naturally rare “mirrored” version of reversed isomerization and polarity.  In mammals (including humans), both isomers of fructose are not used directly for energy, instead being shunted by the liver for conversion primarily into blood triglycerides and body fat.

    The two fructoses are not the same, and the HFCS industry is not inclined to look for possible secondary health effects; they just want their profits to continue.

    Honey is a wholesome food eaten for millenia by humans, containing much more than simple sugars. HFCS has been around for mere decades. Why be a lab rat for ADM or Cargill?

  • Soylent

    4/24/2010 12:39:00 PM |

    "Is there any difference in fructose by source?"

    I don't know.

    "I know that natural fructose has a molecule that is either right-handed or left-handed (can't remember which) and manufactured fructose is the opposite?"

    Fructose in nature exists in many forms depending on what has produced it.

    Fructose can exist as a linear ketose, a six-member pyranose ring, or a 5-member furanose ring. These exist in left-rotating(D) or right-rotating(L) forms.

    I don't see any specific pattern that would allow one to claim that fructose in corn syrup is somehow uniquely evil. It is even produced by a biological process with enzymes.

    If you're going to do some more research on this, keep in mind that the notation can be a bit confusing. Small l and small d refer to which way it rotates plane polarized light(l is anti-clockwise/left and d is clockwise/right). But there is also big L and big D which refer to the different enantiomers; in fructose it happens to be that l-fructose is a D-fructose and vice versa.

  • Soylent

    4/24/2010 1:21:07 PM |

    "Despite its name, the fructose in HFCS is not the same as the L-fructose found in fruit and honey;"

    No the most common kind in nature is D-fructose, also known as l-fructose(capitalization matters).

    "[...]instead it contains high concentrations of D-fructose, a naturally rare “mirrored” version of reversed isomerization and polarity."

    But it's not naturally rare. You won't usually find L-fructose in plants; but this does not prevent you from getting plenty of L-fructose in a "natural" diet.

    Fruits contain not just fructose, but also lots of sucrose. When you eat this sucrose it will be broken down by acid hydrolysis into L-fructose.

    Different plants, animals, bacteria or fungi that use enzymes instead of acid hydrolysis to break down sucrose use different enzymes, yielding either L-fructose or D-fructose.

    L and D enantiomers does not cover all varieties of fructose that exist in nature.

    I don't see any particularly sinister pattern here. It smells more like more like it is part of the long-running FUD campaign against the artificial and man-made by the technophobes. See the success of organic farming for the damage such long-running FUD campaign can do. Organic farming uses more land, more water, more energy and more pesticides. Which replaces "artificial" fertilizer such as mined potash, with "natural" fertilizer such as mined potash without the dirt removed(all this does is increase shipping costs).

  • javieth

    8/15/2010 8:21:23 PM |

    The honey is really great for the skin, i usually use it in my face, is really wonderful. After my mask i feel my face smooth and clean. And my boyfriend always notice the difference, he simply love it. I feel more comfortable with my self and he is always with too much energy because he usually buy viagra

  • buy jeans

    11/3/2010 9:53:00 PM |

    While the average per capita intake of honey is only a modest 1.29 lb per year (National Honey Board; 2008) and therefore contributes only 0.77 lb of fructose per year, there are people who, believing honey to be healthy, use it to excess and use far more than 1.29 lb per year.

  • Sc0rp10n

    12/15/2010 9:12:26 PM |

    For your body fructose is fructose - simple. The body has no way of differentiating. The outer shell is stripped off and what remains is FRUCTOSE. Fructose cannot be used for energy and will be shipped to the liver once processed and converted to fat - usually abdominal fat (note the expanding muffin tops of young girls drinking fruit juices as healthy options)!

    Fructose is fructose to your body, whether you have to digest it or it's supplied to your processed.

    You can see from this analysis and study that honey reduces your immune function, for instance, by nearly as much as pure fructose and by much more than glucose or starch:

    http://www.second-opinions.co.uk/leukocytic_index.html

    Anyone eating the recommended low-fat, high carb, high fibre diet and having those 5 small meals a day, will have impaired their immune function by 50% for pretty much the whole day!

    For optimal health you have to eat a high fat diet, that's very low in carbs.

    Follow my thread here:
    http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message1156003/pg1

  • Robert Miles

    3/20/2011 12:16:58 PM |

    Research on mice shows that, for them, fructose causes insulin restance and obesity. Insulin resistance makes type 2 diabetes worse, converts pe-diabetes into type 2, and type 1 diabetes into type 1.5 (also known as double diabetes).

    Does this also apply to humans?  The "expert" opinions vary so widely that they essentially prove little more than the need for similar research on humans.

    Manufacturing processes seledom distinguish between the two isomers at all, and therefore starting with anything that does not have isomers would almost always produce a 50-50 mixture of the two isomers of fructose.

    Manufacturing processes starting with one isomer of something would be much more likely to produce just one isomer of whatever their result is.

    So far, research on humans has shown that fructose make your brain increase your appetite.  Also, your liver converts it into cholesterol and saturated fat.  The rest of your body has little use for it; it cannot be used for energy the same way glucose can.

    Do D-glucose and L-glucose have different effects on your body?  I haven't found any research papers saying one way or the other yet.

  • Robert Miles

    3/20/2011 12:24:39 PM |

    One more comment:  The heating process used in manufacturing high fructose corn syrup, will, if overdone, turn some of it into a compound toxic to honeybees.

    Does this also apply to humans?  So far, I haven't found any research papers saying that anyone has done any research into whether it does or not.

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