"From a biological stance...."


(Morgan Rose) #1

Hey all! Been a while since I been on the forums… I have missed everyone!!!

Now if this is discussed elsewhere please feel free to remove. I am purely just looking for credible sites/facts. I am having a debate with myself (lol) but really a friend who is constantly down my throat about how our body "needs sugar. And he always says “From a biological stance” and it drives me CRAZYYY :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:
I Just would like to know if there is a resource I can “back up” what I am trying to say.

I’m defending myself because in this same post(s) I have people who suffer from diabetes trying to make the lifestyle change but people like this guy makes them hesitant.

Thanks for any Help!
And no I didn’t proofread I’m in a hurry to post this lol I apologize


#2

What level of sciencing would be appropriate for your friend?

All the science and references:
brain_glucose_ketones_relationship.pdf (540.4 KB)

A sciencey blog with jargon explained:
http://eatingacademy.com/nutrition/ketosis-advantaged-or-misunderstood-state-part-i

Or is there a specific thing that he thinks we “need sugar” to do? Besides blood sugar and brain function.


(Morgan Rose) #3

he just saying our livers can sustain. We need sugar and fruits/veggies


#4

You mean we need liver glycogen? GNG will provide glucose instead of liver glycogen. It will also provide glycogen to the muscles after exercise.

Gluconeogenesis (GNG) is a metabolic pathway that results in the generation of glucose from certain non-carbohydrate carbon substrates. From breakdown of proteins, these substrates include glucogenic amino acids (although not ketogenic amino acids); from breakdown of lipids (such as triglycerides), they include glycerol (although not fatty acids); and from other steps in metabolism they include pyruvate and lactate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluconeogenesis

[I guess I don’t understand why he thinks his liver needs you to eat sugar when it can make its own glucose from fat and protein. Does he think you need it to stay alive? Run a marathon?]


(John) #5

Post some links above, then have him post actual studies that show the body has to take in sugar to survive, it is ridiculous and there is no such thing.


#6

He’s partially right, as the brain at least does need some amount of glucose. The part missing from that is that we can produce enough glucose to sustain the brain and any other process that needs it through gluconeogenesis as others have mentioned.

Part of the reason we are able to produce that much is because our usage actually decreases when there is not enough glucose available. The brain goes from running 100% on glucose to running about 30% I believe. If it continued to run on 100% glucose, he might be right that we can’t produce enough (though, i guess that’s uncertain, as it appears to be a demand driven process, so it’s hard to say what the maximum output is).

Regardless, if it was absolutely necessary to consume sugars to survive, there’d be a lot of dead people around the zero carb crowd, who get so little sugar it’s generally negligible (hence zero carbs). There have been experiments where people were only permitted meat mostly for a year while being closely monitored as well we could dig up (which also proved the body didn’t absolutely need vitamin C in all situations). That may not prove that no one requires some amount of sugars to survive, but it certainly proves that it is not true that everyone needs to consume sugars to survive, at least not from fruits and vegetables.

I wonder though, if he’s just like me in that his biology classes simply only when over the cell respiration cycle whereby glucose is turned into energy in human bodies. In mine at least I recall there being acknowledgement that other cycles exist, this was just the most common one. if that’s the case, he just needs to be shown what the other processes are (how fatty acids are turned into ketones and from there into energy, etc).