With rain and driving, no photos were taken today... no travel stories came to hand. So, today's rant is another health lecture. Please read only if you are interested in living for a long time.
Who likes a good soap opera? Nothing clarifies the goodies from the baddies better than the drama that occurs in your blood... when you eat bread. Let's look into this drama-packed sequence of activities.
Refined wheat is easy for us to digest... including the whole-grain versions. The bread hits the large intestine where stomach acids supported by bacteria quickly do their job... the carbohydrates are broken free from the other components of the bread... gluten gets broken up into its various protein elements. These components pass into the small intestine where receptors are there waiting to check the molecules offered to them. If they fit the specifications... if the molecule has the shape that sticks to the receptors... the molecule is allowed to pass from the gut (outside the body) into the bloodstream (inside the body). The carbohydrates are allowed into the body as glucose... one of the body's major sources of energy. You may have heard that bread has one of the highest glycaemic index... it packs more glucose per gram... higher than sugar (sucrose)... higher than fruits (fructose).
After eating bread, your blood sugar levels jump very quickly. The body call to the pancreas to deliver insulin... that we need to get blood sugars into muscle and organ cells... where the energy can be used. Insulin knocks on the door of the blood cell and asks if it can carry off a bit of excess blood sugar. In healthy people there is decorum in the way insulin does its job.
It's when you have been growing a 'wheat belly' that things get impolite. Allow your blood sugars to peak... too high... too often... the body gets frantic in asking the pancreas for more and more insulin... the pancreas gets fatigued... and doesn't regulate the amount of insulin as accurately as it should. Insulin also starts to lose patience... instead of asking politely, it starts yelling at the cells to lift their game in clearing the blood sugar. As you would expect, the blood cells don't like being yelled at... they stop listening and don't take up as much of the blood sugar as they used to. The medicos call this change in decorum 'insulin resistance'... the blood cells become resistant to the insulin... blood sugars remain high... the body keeps demanding that the pancreas delivers more insulin... and people suffer illness... feeling as if they are not getting enough energy. Allow this unhealthy balance to remain... and you will end up suffering Diabetes Type 2.
The liver comes to the rescue... blood sugars reaching the liver are converted to fats. Some people find this fact somewhat surprising. As a general rule... eating fats does not make you fat... eating bread (and other carbohydrates) makes you fat. Except for people with other complicating issues... the quickest way to lose your body fat... is to significantly cut your intake of carbohydrates... and provide your body needs by eating more fats... animal fats... but be careful about eating too many cooking vegetable oils as a source of fats.
Act II of the soap opera is to follow the villan of the drama... Gluten.
Your body hates gluten... even if you are not a coeliac. The protein derivatives of gluten... particularly gliadin... make their way into the small intestine... they have no chance of fooling the receptors... they can't enter the body through the front door. The body senses gluten hanging around... and tells it to 'bugger-off'... and gluten ignores this message. The body loses patience... and says, "If you won't bugger-off, I'm coming out to put you in a body-bag and send you to the bowel". A tiny gap opens up in the stomach wall... so that antibodies can be injected into the gut. People who eat too much bread often suffer from an irritated bowl... usually caused by the body injecting antibodies into the small intestine to get the gluten to 'bugger-off".
Now here is the tricky part... when this tiny gap opens up... the sneaky gluten proteins slip in before the gap closes... when one molecule of a gluten protein gets through, it seems to widen the gap that makes it easier for more molecules get through.
No one's body likes to have gluten proteins in their body... they don't belong... gluten is an alien. The body musters its war machine to destroy the gluten invaders. If the numbers of invaders are small, the body uses its ASIO forces to sneak up and put a bullet through gluten's head... no collateral damage. If you have a lot of gluten in your blood, the body calls out the Scottish Regiments... "collateral damage be damned... let's get the bastards!" As a result, your system suffers chronic levels of inflammation. Over a long period of time this leads to accelerated aging... arthritis comes early... cardiovascular disease risks are elevated... but most scary of all... chronic inflammation of the brain leads to a long list of unpleasant consequences... the most frightening being Alzheimer's disease.
You probably like the scary bits of this soap opera... so here is one more. Gliadin can jump the blood brain barrier. It attaches itself to receptors in the brain that are the same receptors used by opiates to create addiction. Gliadin does not seem to affect behaviour as dramatically as opiates or alcohol... it has one major affect... it makes you hungry. You can count on it... 30 minutes after eating bread... enough time for gliadin to work is way to the brain... no matter how much bread you ate... you will feel hungry once more. At restaurants, waiters give you bread... before they take your order... before they give you something to drink... they want you eating bread as soon as possible... so that in 30 minutest time... about the time you'll be offered desert... you will feel hungry once more.
Next time you are in the supermarket checkout what is in the shopping trolley of the people ahead of you. I bet that of the non-vegetable/fruits eatable items, over 75% of the packaged items will contain wheat. Food producers are putting wheat into everything... everything possible... because of the addictive properties of wheat. Read the labels... wheat is now being added into the most unlikely products... to feed our addiction.
The sad part about this soap opera is that 50% of it is true. I have tried to accurately tell the facts that I'm finding in the literature... but I am not a trained medico and will have made many unintentional errors. Also, the rate of research in this area is exploding... and the best science today will be proved to be inadequate tomorrow.
Here endeth the third lesson.
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