This Journal entry offers a look at the history, epidemiology, biochemistry, politics, and the attendant problems of the obesity issue.
I often lament that today’s average physician is not properly grounded in human biochemistry, and therefore lacks the wherewithal to translate such knowledge into pearls of health for the consumers of what should be the health care industry. It is really more of a sick care industry. Diseases are “managed.” Diseases are not often cured, and healing has become rare.
In this Journal entry we visit with a physician who is translating his biochemical knowledge into knowledge which can help heal.
All physicians who made it through college premed requirements, and then made it through medical school training, and then made it through their chosen specialty residency training…all of these intelligent, gifted, willful, and creative physicians could be taking lessons from some of the great physician mentors who teach the principles of natural healing in body, mind, emotions, and spirit. These principles are founded on the body’s natural biochemistry.
The word “doctor” means “teacher” in its Greek etymology. I believe that the physician’s most important duty, after diagnosis, is compassionately teaching the patient in the classroom of healing. In truth, the patients’ inherent Divine intelligent healing mechanism is already more intelligent and learned than the doctor’s cerebral creativity. All the doctor needs to arrange is a type of mentorship of advice and guidance for the student.
Big Pharma and accomplices have undermined this ideal relationship. The doctor is deluded into pharmaceutical offerings only, and the patient is deluded into the expectation that a fast fix is within reach. The patient then develops the belief and attitude that little self accountability and life growth will be necessary. The development of the consciousness of healing is truncated in the physician and in the patient.
The medical industry has some wonderful technologies and treatments which are life saving, and, in the short term, are life enhancing. However, long term healing and life growth should be a collaborative effort of the physician and the patient, and it should be mostly guided by the desire, will, and native healing intelligence of the patient.
The average physician who is practicing medicine today is doing just that—practicing the prescription of a variety of medicines. Physicians of various sub-specialties rarely communicate with each other about a patient’s overall disease process. They simply prescribe more medicines for the patient based on whatever the diagnosis might be for which the patient has been referred to their sub-specialty for treatment.
This form of medical practice is faulty. This style of fragmented and compartmentalized method of dealing with an individual human who is out of chemical balance is fraught with the superimposition of more abnormal chemistry. This leads to polypharmacy prescriptions.
Polypharmacy is the usage of a variety of pharmaceuticals which mask the symptoms without balancing the underlying inherent biochemical imbalances, and moreover, there are the attendant problems of multi drug metabolism: negative and sometimes lethal side effects, drug-nutrient depletions, and complicating synergistic drug interactions.
You might think of this form of medicine as treating the smoke, but not treating the fire.
The American Obesity Epidemic
Today we look at the obesity issue through the mind and thinking of a physician who teaches biochemistry to professionals, medical students, and lay people. In the video link here, he is teaching to a lay audience. Millions of individuals have now watched this video on YouTube. It would seem that there are a great many who are interested in obesity and its biochemistry, and they have come to a good source for understanding.
Our teacher is Dr. Robert H. Lustig, M.D., who is on staff at the UCSF Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism. He will be presenting a 1.5 hour long video presentation entitled “Sugar: The Bitter Truth.”
Dr. Lustig understands how to wrap his audience in the simple understanding of a number of historical and biological concepts. He presents a deft biochemical journey through the post WWII problems created by the USDA and the FDA, and their greed inspired malfeasance. He calls this malfeasance “the fructosification of America…and the world.”
Fructose is a 5 carbon sugar which is normally present as the sugar in fruit. Fruit has the requisite fiber present to make this presentation of fructose to our chemistry a healthier prospect than the ingestion of food industry crystalline fructose. What Nature prepackages for us has evolved with us as a healthy preference. I refer to fruit as “Nature’s candy.”
Back in the 1960’s a Japanese researcher derived fructose into a crystalline state, and then the trouble began in the 1970’s when the American food machine got its hands on the stuff during the Nixon years.
Fructose is a carbohydrate, it is metabolized like fat, and it is a toxin. I call such food toxins by the moniker of “antifood.” For instance, trans fats are a type of antifood. Fructose and high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) are also antifoods.
HFCS is seen in about every processed food on the shelf. Have a look at those fruit drinks and “soft drinks.” Table sugar, or sucrose, is a disaccharide sugar comprised of 50% fructose and 59% glucose. HFCS simply means that the fructose content of the sugar is “higher” and is made to be 55% of the content.
Think about Coca Cola for a second. A 12 ounce bottle, or can, contains the equivalent of 10 teaspoons of HFCS, a pile of sodium, a big hit of caffeine, all of which are dissolved in a background of phosphoric acid. Drop an ordinary nail into a bottle of Coca Cola and it will dissolve over time. Coke is great for washing all of the bugs off of your vehicle’s windshield. Just don’t get it on your car’s paint. That’s the phosphoric acid at work. Phosphoric acid also weakens bones and teeth by the same mechanism.
Dr. Lustig will inform you about the problems with the sugars.
Here is the link to his highly viewed video presentation “Sugar: the Bitter Truth.”
In summary I will present some of the information Dr. Lustig offers towards the end of his presentation. You can keep these points in mind as he develops the evidence and the story.
- Fructose (sucrose vs. HFCS) consumption has increased in the past 30 years, coinciding with the obesity epidemic.
- There is no obvious difference between a good carbohydrate (glucose) and a bad carbohydrate (fructose). Fructose is not glucose. The point which he develops is “a calorie is not a calorie.”
- You are not what you eat; you are what you do with what you eat.
- Hepatic fructose metabolism leads to all of the manifestations of the Metabolic Syndrome: hypertension, de novo lipogenesis, dyslipidemia, hepatic steatosis, inflammation, hepatic insulin resistance, obesity
- CNS leptin resistance which promotes continuous consumption
- Fructose ingestion interferes with obesity intervention.
- Fructose is a chronic hepatotoxin (it is alcohol without the buzz), but the FDA cannot and will not regulate it.
In the summary listings above are some words that may baffle you. Here is a little dictionary of some of the terms:
- de novo lipogenesis = genesis of new fat
- dyslipidemia = disorders of blood lipids, or fats, such as triglycerides and cholesterol
- hepatic = having to do with the liver
- steatosis = fatty infiltration
- CNS = central nervous system
- leptin = a hormone which signals the brain about one’s level of satiety
- hepatotoxin = possessing direct liver cell toxicity
It is estimated that non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) affects up to 30 percent of the U.S. population. Usually asymptomatic, it can progress to more serious liver conditions, including non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) and then on to cirrhosis. NAFLD and NASH are reversible conditions, but cirrhosis is an irreversible process.
Conclusion
I hope you enjoyed Dr. Lustig’s presentation. He is an accomplished speaker who knows how to marshal facts into a creative and truthful interpretation of a serious problem in our society. The “obesity epidemic” is very real. One can look around and see this problem everywhere.
If enough people assist in the spread of this knowledge, we may see a re-emergence and further re-actualization of the validity of our natural healing and evolution mechanisms, a validation of Life and its wonderful mysteries, without the negative influences brought on by profit driven government agencies.
Thank you for reading.
Wishing you health and happiness.
Signing off from Crestone and Beyond
Associated Reading
- Blood Sugar and Brain Health…a writing on this website about the effects of blood sugar dysregulation on brain health.
- Holistic neurologist Dr. David Perlmutter, M.D., interviews Dr. Lustig in this October, 2017 update on Dr. Lustig’s work, and his new book Fat Chance–the Bitter Truth about Sugar.
- Fatty Liver–A Silent Epidemic…a nice written summary of NAFLD with a link to a 24 minute podcast with well known holistic physician Robert Rountree, M.D.
- Ketones–Understanding These Precious Molecules…an excellent brief summation of ketones which includes a very good exogenous ketone supplement…Keto-Nootropic, from Designs for Health.
- Sugar Industry Long Downplayed Potential Harms…a November, 2017 NYT explanation of sugar industry malfeasance in the handling of its own damning research data on the harms of sugar. Here is a more detailed examination of this corruption, as published in PLOS Biology.
- Alcohol and Nutrient Depletion…an important writing about the biochemical effects of alcohol consumption and the pathology which it causes due to nutrient depletions.
- To Fight Fatty Liver, Avoid Sugary Foods and Drinks…a January 22, 2019 report in the NYT about a new study reported in JAMA which supports the work of Dr. Lustig, as written above.
- New review evaluates several dietary approaches for nonalcoholic fatty liver disease…several types of diet were evaluated in 6 randomized controlled trials. In addition, “Individuals with NAFLD have established disease and nutritional demands beyond what could be obtained from the diet alone; therefore, dietary supplements should also be considered to help reduce the progression of the disease and improve liver function. Nutrients to consider include, probiotics, delta and gamma tocotrienols, fiber, resistant startch, fish oil, CoQ10, berberine, and milk thistle.”
- New review investigates the use of carnitine supplementation in nonalcoholic fatty liver disease…”The results showed that carnitine supplementation significantly decreased the HOMA-IR, AST, ALT, and triglyceride levels. On the other hand, it did not have an effect on BMI, body weight, HDL, LDL, or total cholesterol levels. Previous research has demonstrated carnitine supplementation provides a protective effect by preventing lipid peroxidation and can affect liver function by decreasing insulin resistance.” Posted here on 2-8-20.