HEALTH
ture (no conflict of interest there, right?), include
your whole grains, beans, and brown rice, sweet
potatoes and things like that. They would basically be the equivalent of putting twigs on your metabolic fire. They’ll burn a little bit, get things hot,
but they’re not going to last very long. (And you
have to ask yourself whether it’s really that good
for your metabolic engine to burn “hotter” all the
time….You instead want it to burn efficiently and
reliably if you want it—and you—to last!)
Refined carbohydrates like white bread, white potatoes, pasta, white rice, refined grains and things
of that nature, probably make up the bulk of the
American or western diet. They are really the metabolic equivalent of crumpled up paper on that
metabolic fire. Things like certain types of alcoholic beverages, and sweetened beverages, juices, sodas and things like that, are ultimately the metabolic equivalent of gasoline or lighter fluid on that
metabolic fire. So if, metaphorically, all you had
was kindling to heat your house with using a wood
stove for instance, then you would basically be
living your life preoccupied with where that next
handful of fuel was going to come from to keep
your metabolic fire going.
What’s the alternative? We’re told, or sort of taught
by medical authorities and by mainstream dietitians and nutritionists, that glucose is “of necessity” our primary source of fuel. It’s really a very misleading statement, and it’s only true if a person has
metabolically adapted him/herself to it, and rather
unnaturally I might add, as their primary source of
fuel.
Miriam: What is the downside for the body in relying on glucose?
Nora: There are many downside to that, not the
least of which is a total enslavement to being constantly preoccupied with where that next handful
kindling is going to be coming from. The other part
to that of course is the fact that sugar is inherently
damaging to the body, and there is no minimum
safe amount of glucose or any other type of sugar
that the human body can have without it creating
some damage. And that damage becomes quite
cumulative over time!
We now know, for instance, that even high normal
levels of glucose – in other words, non pre-diabetic, with a perfectly normal fasting glucose range
but just toward the higher end – have been associ-
28 | New Consciousness Review
ated with pathophysiological (neurodegenerative)
changes in the brains of people according to several
different studies in the last couple of years. --Most
affected are areas of the brain typically associated
with the development of Alzheimer’s disease (now
being referred to as “type 3 diabetes”). Most of us
should probably shoot for a fasting blood sugar of
somewhere between 70 and 85, hopefully without
any associated low blood sugar symptoms, and
that’s of course the rub. One study published in
the journal, Neurology in 2013 concluded: “Our
results indicate that even in the absence of manifest type 2 diabetes mellitus or impaired glucose
tolerance, chronically higher blood glucose levels
exert a negative influence on cognition, possibly
mediated by structural changes in learning-relevant brain areas. Therefore, strategies aimed at
lowering glucose levels even in the normal range
may beneficially influence cognition in the older
population…”
Sugar basically has a couple of different effects. It
glycates tissues. Glycation is a process by which
sugar will combine with proteins and fats, and
cause them to become sticky and misshapen and
start to malfunction. The combination generates
something called advanced glycation or glycosylation (depending on who you’re talking to) end
products. They create the acronym AGE is which is
sort of appropriate because this is one of the primary means by which human beings age (in ways
we don’t like). The more sugar there is, the more
glycation occurs.