sugar

Sugar for Brains [Show Notes]

 in Brain / Podcasts  tagged ATP / G6P / glucose / Hypoglycemia / krebs cycle / sugar / sugar high by

Sugar Basics

Sugar in your blood = glucose
Your body prefers glucose over any other sugar out there.

-ose = sugar suffix

GlucOSE
FructOSE – fruit sugar
SucrOSE – table sugar
SucralOSE – Splenda

Your body can turn any of these other sugars in to glucose.  It can actually turn other carbohydrates, and even non-sugar molecules into glucose if it really needs to.  This all happens in your liver…

If you were in a long-term starvation or malnutrition situation, your body would circulate non-glucose energy sources to try to get energy, since the process of making glucose can be relatively slow.  This is because your body would prefer to live than die.

Brain Food

The brain is a picky eater, and refuses to utilize non-glucose sources of energy.  This is because your brain works A LOT!  And it doesn’t have time to use inefficient sources of energy.  Therefore, it will hog the glucose from the rest of your body.

Your skeletal muscles use glucose to do work.  This is why people with diabetes have to be extra cautious when they exercise.

Extra glucose gets saved for those times when you’re not eating.  It gets put in a really long chain called glycogen.  But getting the glucose back from the glycogen can be relatively slow.

Recovering from an episode of low blood sugar takes time and requires rest (so you’re not burning through the fuel as fast as you replenish it).  But it can also be emotionally stressful because you may be required to eat “unhealthy” amounts of sugary or carb-heavy foods to get back to normal.

Energy Production

Glucose has a very complex metabolism cycle – the Krebs cycle.
One intermediate is glucose-6-phosphate (G6P) – there is a genetic mutation where a protein for this step doesn’t do it’s job very well.  If this step gets delayed or clogged up, then there is a detour metabolism step that leads to triglyceride production, when then leads to fat storage.  *womp womp*  (note: triglycerides are useful in the right amounts for cell repair)  This is also why eating large amounts of sugary plus fatty foods can lead to quick weight gain.

The end result of this cycle is Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP).  It is super energetic when a phosphate piece is removed.  It’s like the body’s dynamite.  This is how a sugar high works – all the sugar leads to all the dynamite exploding at once, but then it takes a while for it to get replenished, and that’s why you crash after a sugar-high.

Low Blood Sugar is Bad

To immediately recover from low blood sugar, you need simple sugar (orange juice, regular soda, sugar-full hard candy, glucose tabs or paste or gel).  To continue to recover, you need carbs plus something that will help it not absorb so fast (i.e. protein, healthy fats).

If you ever look at the underside of your tongue, you can see the blood vessels really clearly because they’re really close to the surface.  So if someone is unconscious due to low blood sugar, you can use a glucose tablet or gel under their tongue and it will absorb into the blood stream.  This is also how you can absorb sugar quickly from sugar-full gum.

Low blood sugar can lead to emotional fluctuations (aka crabby and grouchy) and short-term memory loss (and not just because you passed out).

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Music Credits:  “Radio Martini” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)  Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0  http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Liver Lesson #2: Metabolism [Show Notes]

 in Podcasts  tagged athletes / Cholesterol / Diabetes / fat / gallbladder / glucose / intestines / Liver / metabolism / protein / sugar by

Review

Liver – have one.

Lobule – yep!

A colored sketch of a liver lobule with labeled parts.

Liver makes bile, helps digest fat in the intestines. Gallbladder? Holds bile until your intestines need bile.

3 main energy sources:  Carbohydrates, Fats, Proteins

Intestines absorb them into the blood and send them to the liver.

Basics of Metabolism

Metabolism = change

This type of change happens for 2 reasons:

  1. To make something useful
  2. To make something safe

What’s water got to do with it?

  • Your blood is made of water
  • Liver preforms hydrolysis on carbohydrates (using water to dissolve it into tiny bits of sugar = glucose)

Carbohydrate Metabolism

Glucose is the main form of sugar that your body uses for energy.

Sugars are the easiest to turn into energy so that gets used first.  So low carb diets force the body to go after fats, which are the next easiest.  If you’re eating low fat as well, then the body will burn the fat deposits on the body.  Weight loss!

Fat Metabolism

The liver breaks down the fatty acids to make cholesterol (which is not always bad).  Cholesterol is used in your cells walls to keep them fluid and slippery.  Cholesterol is also used to make bile (think “like dissolves like”).  If there’s any extra fatty acids the liver performs gluconeogenesis (gluco = glucose, neo = new, genesis = creation). It basically creating glucose out of anything that contains Carbon.

This is why fats are bad for Type 2 Diabetics as well as sugar.

Protein Metabolism

Protein is the hardest, but can still provide energy.  Proteins are made up of amino acids.  Amino = Nitrogen, acid = carbon.  The nitrogen is relatively useless, so the liver turns it into urea, that gets sent out and filtered by the kidneys.  The part with the carbon can be turned into glucose (gluconeogenesis again).

One of the intermediate steps of the urea production is ammonia.  There is actually a blood test that can be done to test the ammonia-urea balance (BUN = Blood Urea Nitrogen), and if this is out of balance, it indicates a problem.  This test may indicate that your body is metabolizing your own muscles.  This can also be a sign of starvation or other nutritional imbalance.  You need your muscles, you don’t want to metabolize your muscles.

Your body generally needs fully intact amino acids to build, rebuild, and heal muscles.  Proteins and amino acids have a life span, so your body is constantly rebuilding and replacing with fresh supply.  Athletes require higher protein diets than most because of this process.

Take Away

Glucose and fats aren’t inherently bad, it’s more about the amounts of each that get consumed and float around your body.

Your liver can be very efficient and metabolizing the foods you eat.

Your body gets fat deposits because the body is saturated with enough fatty acids that it needs, so any extra gets packed up and shipped around the body to be stored until later.

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