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.