Carbohidrates II (About fiber and lactose-intolerance)

Let's continue to explore the carbs story.

As i said in a previous post, there are some carbs that cannot be digested. They are named fibers, and they can be water soluble and insoluble.
-Soluble fibers are known to lower blood cholesterol  (reducing the risk of heart disease), slow glucose absorption (protecting against type 2 diabetes) and hold moisture in stools (preventing constipation).
-The insoluble fibers are known to increase fecal weight, speed fecal passage and provide bulk and fullness feelings when eaten.

At first, in the past decades, researchers believed in a relation between fibers and colon cancer, but recent cohort studies proved that untrue. However, an increase in fibers can improve health, only because we are not having the right amount every day.


Lactose intolerance

What is lactose? Lactose is the sugar from milk, yogurt and dairy. Lactose intolerance is manifested through abdominal pain, bloating, gas development and diarrhea. Is is the result of a deficiency of an enzyme present in the gastro-intestinal tract, called lactase. Lactase can break the lactose in its primary components - glucose and galactose. Anyway, as you age, your body gradually lose the ability to produce lactase. Most of the people around the world will become eventually lactose-intolerant. Globally,most of the Northern and Western Europe is lactose-tolerant, while most of the Asia is lactose intolerant.

Does this means complete elimination of milk and dairy? Not always, sometimes yogurt is better tolerated than milk, but if this is not the case, you can always use lacto-free milk (made from soy or almonds, for example).

How to avoid getting fat in few easy steps (part 1)

This is a story of love, a Valentine's Day special, the story of interdependence and attachment between two main macro-nutrients, let's call them carbohydrates and fats.

Carbohydrates can be simple and complex. The simple ones can be classified in monosaccharides (glucose, fructose and galactose) and disaccharides (maltose, sucrose and lactose). The complex ones are glycogen, starchi and fibers.

During digestion, the starch is broken to same degree, under the action of the amylase enzyme, secreted by salivary glands. When the carbohydrates reaches the stomach, the amylase is inactivated by the acidic medium. The digestion continues in the duodenum, under the action of the pancreatic amylase (an enzyme secreted by the pancreas). The starch is broken in maltose, sucrose and lactose. They are transformed in fructose, glucose and galactose under the action of enzymes such as maltase, sucrase and lactase).

Absorbed in the blood stream, the monosaccharides (glucose, fructose and galactose) are then processed in the liver, where almost all the fructose and galactose is used, and a big part of the glucose goes back in the blood stream, in direct relation to the blood sugar level (glucose level).

When glucose level goes up, the pancreas is secreting the insulin hormone, the role of insulin being to transform the glucose from the blood stream into glycogen, and to deposit the glycogen into the muscle and in the liver. After this process the blood sugar level is decreasing. Because of this action, the pancreas is secreting another hormone called glucagon, to break the glycogen from the liver into glucose, and when the liver deposit is finished (for example during a period of fasting), the glycogen from the muscle is used. The glycogen deposit from the muscle it is also used to generate energy when we are exercising. If we finish both of them (the deposits from muscle and from liver), the muscle is used for glycogen and we lose weight.

If both the deposits are up to 100%, the glucose is transformed into fat. But the fat is never transformed back into glucose.

Conclusions:

Fasting and exercise are helping us to deplete the glycogen deposits, so the glucose will not be transformed in fat. (Search on Google about intermittent fasting)

If we fast and exercise too much, we will lose weight (but this will be muscle weight and not fat weight).

It is possible to eat plenty of sweets, as long as you are having a fasting period right before/after, or you exercise, or both. (This is by far my favourite conclusion)


(More to come soon - this is an excerpt from the future second edition of the book The Macronutrients Pocket Guide, written by me, of course )

Take care of your glycogen deposits,
G.