Food, does it even matter to deal with?

Do you think that food has no effect on health? Okay, so let's take a calculator. We calculate how much glucose circulates in the blood, for example at a value of 5 mmol / l, ie 90 mg / dl. We have about 5 l of blood, so we multiply 50 * 90 = 4500 mg, ie 4.5 grams. So a small teaspoon, all over the bloodstream! If we have twice as much, ie 10 mmol / l, it is two teaspoons of sugar. One extra teaspoon is the difference between health and disease. 

But, for example, in the oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT), which is the standard method for detecting diabetes, 75 grams of glucose are given at a time, and blood glucose rises only slightly in healthy people. So where will the 15 teaspoons of sugar go? 

However, there are usually two processes involved, the release of glucose from the digestive tract into the blood and the storage of glucose in the form of glycogen. It depends on the speed with which they can do it. The third event, which, however, emerges as a rescue mechanism, is the conversion of glucose into fat, namely palmitic acid, which is a saturated fatty acid with sixteen C16:0 carbons. This process is called "de novo lipogenesis" (DNL) and we will leave it for later. 

The whole OGTT story lasts about four hours for women and three hours for men. But for us, the most important thing will be to watch only the first two hours. The picture shows the time curves of blood glucose in five groups of people. to the left without metabolic syndrome, to the right with gradually worsening metabolic syndrome. You can see that the area under the curve gradually increases with increasing condition. The return to normal value is also delayed. It is a typical control loop response that hits the limits and is unable to adjust the controlled variable to the desired level. The storage speed is controlled. If the storage rate reaches its limit, higher blood glucose levels appear in the blood and it takes a while before it drains.

So what about that? The ideal state is a constant normal glucose value. We have several options to achieve this. 

  1. Heal, increase max storage speed. But for now, we'll put the best solution aside. 
  2. Reduce the rate of glucose release from the digestive system. This can be done. All you have to do is choose another food, use resistant starch instead of pure sugar, or first fill your stomach with proteins, which will create a barrier and ensure the gradual release of food from the stomach. Proteins just take a long time to digest. Simple, right? 
  3. Reduce the amount of sugar, eat less carbohydrates in each meal, the so-called low-carb diet. 
This simple outline was supposed to convince you that with food you can achieve a completely normal course of blood glucose even if you already have a problem with the rate of glycogen storage, so it can be affected very much.  

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Sources:

https://portal.findresearcher.sdu.dk/en/publications/disruption-of-fasting-and-post-load-glucose-homeostasis-are-large

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