Sugar: Fructose Part 3/5

A couple nights ago, I added a bit more information on oxidation and glycation in my previous post, which I neglected to explore in detail. Take another look at it. It is highlighted in light green just in case you missed it. (Thank you Mom!)

Today, we will be talking about sugars unique ability to promote cancer cell growth. In a recent study conducted by a team at UCLA, researchers found that although cancer cells will consume glucose to survive, fructose caused them to proliferate(multiply) at a much greater rate.

Dr. Anthony Heaney at UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center and team wrote "Fructose activates a key cellular pathway that drives cell division, promoting the growth of cancer cells" 

Cancer cell proliferation. 

Read the full article here. And another one here. 

This is pretty scary, considering sugar and high fructose corn syrup is consumed massively on a daily basis. By default, this is what our body deals with; fructose aside. 

On a daily basis, our bodies are dealing with minor stress from oxygen; but we are evolved to handle that, it's part of life. It's our natural wear and tear as animals. Our body fights off oxidative damage alone just by breathing. Fortunately, we have evolved mechanisms of homeostasis. Homeostasis is our bodies natural self regulation. Our bodies want to maintain equilibrium, and if left alone, it will more or less take care of itself. The body is an amazing thing in this way. If you don't disrupt the system and the balance, your body's natural tendency for homeostasis will keep things going smoothly. You have to really overwhelm the system in order to upset the balance and send your metabolism running off the rails. We evolved these mechanisms, but our body didn't foresee foods such a vegetable oils, wheat, high fructose corn syrup and excess amounts of sugar. They are disrupting our natural balance, and are too recent in our diet for us to evolve handling them.

Your body is also creating millions of cells everyday to replace the ones that are dying. There are bound to be errors with thousands of these cells; mistakes will be made. Cancer cells are formed everyday, but in a healthy body they are eliminated.

However, when there is too much fructose in your system, some of those cancer cells might be stimulated enough to survive and reproduce, potentially leading to life-threatening cancer.

Everyone's body is already dealing with the day to day damage, and that doesn't factor in genetics. Some bodies are more prone to defects then others. What did your mom eat before she conceived you, and what did she eat during her pregnancy? These things matter, and play a huge role in the way each and every one of us turned out. I can imagine the amount of damage mothers do to their kids during the 9 months. It makes me wonder about stillbirth. Studies have found the amount of oxidative stress in the mothers body both during pregnancy and during breast feeding, can contribute to chromosomal damage and defects in the child. This needs to be studied more, but you can't deny that there could be a connection. Stillbirth causes: birth defects, chromosomal abnormalities, poor fetal growth, placental problems, diabetes, and high blood pressure in the mother, can all be explained by the modern diet.

DNA is like your body's blueprint, that tells your cells how to form and what to do; when your DNA chromosomes are damaged, cells aren't going to form properly and aren't going to work right. What do we know that causes DNA damage? Oxidation and glycation. If you've been reading this blog, you know that vegetable oils and sugar are the major dietary causes of oxidative stress and glycation.

It is very depressing to think about the amount of damage that a baby can suffer during its formative stages as a direct result of the mother's diet. It is possible that many defects that are blamed on genetics could be avoided by a better, less oxidative diet.

Your child's health is influenced by choices that you make starting even before pregnancy and continuing during the entire term, and during breast-feeding. Don't wait until the child is born to start thinking about his health. Please for his/her sake eat right, and also breast feed your child. Don't listen to anyone who tells you that its not the healthiest food for your baby, or that it doesn't matter if you use formula, because IT DOES. Some studies have found that the majority who die from SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) were formula fed, and babies that were breast fed were less likely to die from SIDS. Breast milk is specially formulated by evolution to be the perfect food for your baby. Breast milk is a source of loric acid, a saturated fat which in the body metabolizes into monolaurin which is a natural antibiotic/ anti-viral, which is great for your immune system. If you don't breast feed, your baby is missing out on the protective benefit of monolaurin, and every other benefit from breast milk.

Have you ever checked out the ingredients for Similac baby formula?

 42.6% Corn Syrup Solids, Soy protein, Safflower oil, Sugar (sucrose), and Soy oil as their top ingredients. 

This is very sad.  Where's the nutrition? How can anyone feed their child that sad excuse for nourishment? All that corn syrup, sugar, and vegetable oils, really? Dr. Robert H. Lustig, Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology, came out with the video “Sugar the Bitter Truth” link here --(youtube.com) .  He talks about the obesity epidemic with fructose and the damaging effects baby formula is having on infants. As Dr. Lustig puts it, Similac is a 'Baby Milkshake.' 

In my next post, I will get to the other topics I promised to write about in my previous post. This post was much longer than anticipated.   Take care.

Sugar: Fructose Part 2/5

-Sorry for taking so long with my updates; work and free time have been tight lately. I will try my best to update at least once a week, but we'll see. I will do my best. Please keep checking back for more posts! 

In my last post, I explained how triglycerides were formed. It is important to keep your triglycerides low. High triglycerides (Hypertriglyceridemia) are one of the strongest predictors of heart disease. High levels of triglycerides in the blood are believed to cause atherosclerosis, the build-up of plaque on artery walls.

Your goal should be to keep your triglyceride under 100. When you get a blood test, its crucial you ask your doctor what your triglyceride count is, your HDL, and your LDL. Your doctor will probably make a big deal out of your total cholesterol, but that is because he/she went to school in the 70s, living through the whole "saturated fat/cholesterol is bad" phase. Pay no attention to his/her ignorance. Nowadays we know that total cholesterol is not very meaningful. Triglycerides are what really show what's going on.

A low triglyceride count indicates that your LDL cholesterol is most likely the large, fluffy, harmless type, whereas when triglycerides are very high, you almost certainly have the dangerous small, dense LDL. Additionally, you should aim to have a ratio of triglycerides to HDL that is less than 2 to 1. For example, HDL: 60, Triglycerides: 120,  that is pretty easy to do with the diet that I recommend, and you can do a lot better than that easily if you stick to it. You can easily have HDL that is even higher than your triglycerides. 80 HDL is great, and 100 is even better. Low fat diets fail to protect you from heart disease. On a low fat diet, your HDL is less than 40, and that's a danger zone. You want to keep it over 60 at the very least.

Although it is a bit more complicated, it may be helpful for you to think of it like this: Eating lots of sugar or too many carbs leads to high triglycerides, and eating plenty of saturated fat is a good way to raise HDL. So a diet that is higher in saturated fat and lower in sugar and carbs will tend to promote the healthiest heart. 

Another issue I'd like to talk about is sugar causing high levels of oxidation/glycation in the body. Oxygen is a highly reactive element; when oxygen reacts with another material it is called oxidation, and it produces molecules that are called oxygen free-radicals. These free radicals are unstable molecules that will react with other molecules, causing cellular damage and possibly even DNA damage and mutation. When metal rusts, or when a cut apple turns brown, that's an example of oxygen reacting with it. When oxidation reactions happen in the human body, it's called aging.


Glycation is when a glucose or fructose molecule binds to a protein or fat; picture sugar turning into caramel in your bloodstream. It's sticky and gunky and easily binds to receptors, proteins, and the walls of your arteries. It's very harmful and has a number of damaging effects, including cellular damage. Glycation and oxidation  both lead to the formation of AGEs (Advanced Glycation End-products), which are believed to contribute to cancer, degeneration, and accelerated aging. According to recent studies, fructose causes glycation and oxidation at 10 times the rate of glucose, so you can see why it is important to limit sugar intake. Starches, which are made of glucose polymers, cause much less damage and stress. The average American consumes 150 pounds of sugar a year, which is about 200 grams of sugar a day.

 Look at the bag of sugar in the picture of my previous post. The average American eats 30 bags of those a year. 30 bags! Your body wasn't made to handle that much sugar! And its certainly taking its toll on people. Vegetable oils (like I've mentioned in a previous post) are vulnerable to lipid peroxidation and cause even worse oxidative stress than fructose does. Virtually all processed foods are made of some combination of sugar and vegetable oils and usually wheat as well. Walk around the middle aisles at a supermarket sometime and try to find something that doesn't have sugar or vegetable oils in it. It's difficult. 

In my next post I will talk about sugars unique ability to promote cancer cell growth, sugar alternatives, the problem with fruit, and sugar causing uric acid which lead to gout.